Cyber security firm Check Point continues to acquire Israeli start-ups to expand its technology offering. Yesterday, Check Point announced the acquisition of Protego from Jerusalem in a deal that was not officially reported by Check Point, but is estimated to reach $ 40 million. For Check Point, which was founded and managed by Gil Shawid, this is an insignificant amount because at the end of the third quarter, it had cash and investments of more than $ 4 billion.
Check Point noted in its announcement that the acquisition was strengthening its cloud services security, using new serverless application protection technology. According to Check Point, it is becoming the world’s first cyber protection provider to provide a unified cloud workload protection solution and cloud posture security configuration, enabling ongoing serverless application protection.
Check Point further notes that Protego provides a technology that prevents malicious attacks on serverless “runtime” apps, and prevents the implementation of vulnerable code in the production environment. Check Point will integrate the technology as part of its unified protection architecture called Infinity, which protects networks, mobile devices, end devices, IoTs, and cloud services. Check Point believes that the increasing use of serverless cloud technologies, challenges existing security concepts on cloud services and applications, and the shift to cloud-based applications is fraught with security vulnerabilities and configuration errors that require extending cloud security services “up to application code and function level” , As defined.
“In implementing digital transformation and implementation of cloud services, organizations are required to adopt a new security concept to protect against the fifth and sixth generation of cyber attacks,” said Dr. Dorit Dor, VP of Product Research and Development at Check Point. “The integration of serverless application protection capabilities within the CloudGuard platform, and the ability to leverage cloud security and compliance capabilities, allow us to provide organizations unprecedented protection for their cloud environments”.
Protego was founded by five founders: CEO Zion Gonen and board members Hillel Solo, Shelly Moore, Benny Zamor and Itai Harush. Since its inception in 2015, the company has raised $ 7 million, so it’s a very successful exit for its investors. -Protego can be noted the Capital Galilee Fund and MizMaa Ventures.
Check Point expects continued profit margins
This is Check Point’s fourth acquisition since the end of 2018 in Israel: preceded by a $ 175 million Dome9 acquisition in October 2018 (plus an additional amount of options and blocked stock) for the cloud security technology company; In January 2019, ForceNock was acquired, which developed technology for securing Web applications and application programming interfaces for millions of dollars; And about three weeks ago, Cymplify was acquired to protect IoT products, in a deal valued at millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Check Point’s CFO Tal Payne was hosted at a Credit Suisse conference yesterday, where she said, among other things, Check Point, like the entire industry, is in a transition period. Payne notes that performance improvement is taking longer than expected, as the company has invested in the last two years but has not yet seen the results of the investment (Credit Suisse believes this is a very competitive environment), and estimates some of the return on investment will come next year. Check Point Credit for Share Point is “neutral” at a target price of $ 110, which is 5.5% lower than the NASDAQ share price. Check Point’s market capitalization is $ 18.1 billion.
Also published on Medium.