Sumo Logic-FactorChain deal highlights appetite for innovative security solutions
Sumo Logic is deepening its roots in the cybersecurity market by acquiring early stage security startup FactorChain.
Sumo is a log analysis platform that helps companies track down problems with their tech infrastructure. FactorChain’s technology, which significantly improves the speed and depth of threat investigations, is still very early stage, but Sumo said it will combine nicely with its existing machine data analytics.
“We are seeing more and more digital businesses struggling to adapt traditional security models to cloud and modern application delivery,” Ramin Sayar, CEO of Sumo Logic, said in a statement. “This problem can’t possibly be answered without new thinking in security analytics and operations,” Sayar added. “The FactorChain acquisition accelerates our vision of a new model that converges operations and security in the cloud and provides innovative solutions to persistent challenges in investigation workflows at cloud scale.”
The FactorChain tech makes it easier to search across several systems to locate issues quickly, in part because it keeps track of previous findings – be it an IP address, email address, or ID information. “It’s not just [about] the base data collection, analytics and platform services, but workflows as well,” Dave Frampton, ex-CEO of FactorChain, told TechCrunch. Frampton added that this investigation phase is the bottleneck for traditional security and cloud and modern applications.
The deal terms were not disclosed, but Sumo had raised $75 million in funding in June, and FactorChain had raised $3.6 million to date. All the FactorChain staff have joined Sumo.
This is an interesting deal in light of how data increasingly moves in and out of companies through the cloud, which has changed the security landscape. FactorChain has an innovative take on the problem, so we’re not surprised that Sumo Logic went after them, despite the target company not yet having launched a product. With the arms race going on in security right now, it’s a good place to be if you’re looking for a deal.