Microsoft has acquired Israel-based Secure Islands following the purchase of two other Israeli security vendors over the past year or so. Redmond shared the pertinent details in an official blog post on Monday:
Secure Islands provides powerful data classification, protection and loss prevention technologies for virtually any type of file, which allows customers to apply data protection to more applications. Global customers, such as UBS, OSRAM, Vodafone and Credit Suisse, use and trust Secure Islands to protect data at each stage of the information lifecycle – from creation to sharing.
Secure Islands’ technology enhances the data protection capabilities available today with Azure Rights Management Service, Microsoft’s cloud-based information protection solution. The company has long been a close Microsoft partner and built its solutions using our rights management technology. Secure Islands will continue to sell its existing solutions and support its customers.
After completing this acquisition, we will integrate Secure Islands’ technology into Azure Rights Management Service to provide a flexible architecture able to meet the most rigorous protection and compliance requirements.
A Micro Deal Amid Macro Trends
Prior to Secure Islands, Microsoft bought Israeli vendors Adallom and Aorato for SaaS application monitoring and on-premises threat detection, respectively,
The Secure Islands deal isn't massive in scope: At ZDNet, reliable Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports the price tag as being $77.5 million.
On balance, Microsoft's security moves simply make common sense in today's market, versus being part of some daring strategic gambit.
"Cloud providers need tools to monitor the performance of apps and services, and to manage permissions and access," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Steve Wilson. "So that explains the three acquisitions from Israel, as Israel has a reputation for good security startup culture."
"But in comparison, Microsoft's buying spree is modest and reasonable," Wilson adds. "In October alone, there was $2 billion in deals with purchases by infrstructure providers like Cisco, and security companies buying one another, like Thales getting Vormetric and Trend Micro taking TippingPoint."
"What's happening there is vertical integration of deep security services—access control, real time vulnerability monitoring, digital signatures, encryption—into higher order products, be they hardware appliances like routers, cloud services, or even the silicon itself," Wilson says.
The Bottom Line
"To draw all this together, security is getting more automated and more embedded," Wilson adds. "Cloud services are integrating performance monitoring, vulnerability management, and encryption. This is highly, highly specialized business. And the security ecosystem is still incredibly diverse because there are different ways to skin the cat, and different business plays going up and down the technology stack."
