Google + Siemplify = ?
January 5, 2022 - Google acquired Siemplify for $500M to enhance its breach prevention capabilities. That is a 10X return for early investors contributed to the $58M of prior funding before the acquisition.
Siemplify provides a platform, named SOAR, where cybersecurity professionals can track, investigate and remediate threats in a single, centralized interface. Users can create software workflows called playbooks in the platform to automate manual aspects of their work. A cybersecurity expert can, for example, create a workflow that automatically opens suspicious files in a sandbox to determine if they indeed contain malware.
What is Google thinking with this acquisition?
From a recent release of the first issue of the Threat Horizon Report, we know that Google want to strengthen its position in the security domain for cloud services.
It is strategic by bringing an established security platform to boost values to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) allowing GCP to grow market share from the current eight percent.
By integrating the SOAR platform with Chronicle cybersecurity unit - Google's own cloud platform for investigating network breaches, and since Chronicle can hold also data on hacking historical information, the possibilities are endless on where Google can take that. Perhaps the next play is to combine Google's own AI capabilities to learn and predict emerging or zero day threats from such information.
With SOAR, Google is gaining a broad set of automation features through the deal including the ability to create automation playbooks well-liked by existing SOAR customers,
Siemplify also brings a simulator for testing playbooks’ reliability before they’re deployed. This will significantly add values to the multiple cloud components and services available on GCP.
The acquisition represents one of several potential future acquisitions and investments Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised U.S. President Joe Biden in August 2021 that the company will invest $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years.