Palo Alto Networks has been on a shopping spree this year. A few months after it announced plans to buy Demisto for $560 million in March, it confirmed its intent to buy Twistlock (for $410 million) and PureSec (for an undisclosed amount). All acquisitions are still pending.

Demisto, a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) company, offered a platform to automate and standardize incident response. Palo Alto Networks' first acquisition of 2019 is intended to boost Demisto's existing integration with its application framework. As part of the deal, Demisto will further grow and leverage the larger firm's distribution network.

Its acquisition of Twistlock, a 4-year-old Israeli startup focused on container security, arrived at the end of May. A day later it confirmed its plans to buy PureSec, another Israeli cloud security startup founded to provide a new application security approach to serverless architecture. The latter deal's value was not made public; however, some Israeli business publications reported a $60 million to $70 million price tag.

Around the same time it confirmed the Twistlock and PureSec purchases, Palo Alto Networks also debuted its Prisma cloud security suite, which integrates its existing products and new offerings into a product portfolio designed for securing the cloud. Technologies from both the acquired companies will bolster Prisma as Palo Alto Networks builds the cloud security suite.

While the Twistlock acquisition took him by surprise, SCV's Thomas says it makes sense. More companies are talking about moving to the cloud and discussing cloud-native security. "There were only so many people doing that and had a product as mature as Twistlock's," he says. Further, Palo Alto Networks is one of the companies "sitting on tons of cash," he adds.

(Image: Palo Alto Networks)