VMware Inc. is stepping up its cloud security game, acquiring a company called CloudCoreo that sells configuration management software.

The virtualization software giant said Wednesday that CloudCoreo’s team of less than 10 employees will be joining its Cloud Services business unit. Meanwhile, CloudCoreo’s products will be integrated into VMware’s much bigger portfolio. The companies didn’t reveal an acquisition price.

CloudCoreo was founded in 2016, touting a product that monitors cloud infrastructure stacks for misconfigurations and errors. The idea is that these problems “can be fixed before breaches or compliance policy violations can occur.”

Misconfiguration is one of the biggest problems enterprises struggle with when it comes to cloud security. That’s because confusion still persists about whether or not the responsibility to configure cloud environments properly comes down to the customer or the cloud provider. And just a single configuration error can result in huge amounts of sensitive corporate data being leaked into the open.

The acquisition looks like a smart move by VMware, which has been looking to improve its ability to manage cloud environments in recent months with the launch of new software-as-a-service tools. The most prominent of these is its AppDefense product, which monitors network traffic for signs of abnormal behavior that could indicate a cyberattack taking place.

But whereas AppDefense is an endpoint security tool for virtual machines, CloudCoreo is more focused on vulnerability assessment. As such, the acquisition should help VMware’s customers to “more easily secure their traditional and modern applications in a multicloud world,” said Milin Desai, VMware’s general manager of cloud services.

More than just providing added security protections, the acquisition suggests that VMware is committed to making money from its move to hybrid cloud and multicloud, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. “CloudCoreo can help with this with its unique stance on security in the software creation and DevOps aspects of next-generation applications,” Mueller said.

Image: VMware