The ongoing march of cybersecurity market consolidation continued today as two startups were acquired by larger, publicly listed established firms.

The first acquisition saw Cloudflare Inc. acquire cybersecurity firm Area 1 Security Inc. for $162 million, while Darktrace PLC acquired Cybersprint B.V. for €47.5 million ($53.7 million). Both were cash and equity deals.

Area 1 was founded in 2014 and offers a product focused on eliminating targeted socially engineered cyberattacks. Pitched as providing the best cloud email security available, Area 1 claims that its service prevents 30% more phishing attacks than email gateways, cloud email suites and other defenses.

Able to be set up in five minutes or less with flexible deployment options and nothing to install, Area 1’s platform is said to decrease the time spent on phishing incident and response remediation by more than 90%. The service preemptively stops business email compromise, malware, ransomware and other advanced threats by discovering and eliminating them before they cause damage.

Area 1 says its cloud-native Horizon platform delivers the only preemptive, comprehensive, contextual and continuous email security, while identifying malicious phishing campaigns earlier than other solutions.

“Email is the largest cyber-attack vector on the Internet, which makes integrated email security critical to any true Zero Trust network,” Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cloudflare, said in a statement. “To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organization’s applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email.”

Area 1 had raised $82.5 million in venture capital funding, according to data from Crunchbase. Investors include Kleiner Perkins, Foregpoint Capital, Icon Ventures, EPIC Ventures and Top Tier Capital Partners.

Cybersprint was founded in 2015 and offers what it describes as breakthrough security for attack surface management.

The company’s service is designed to prevent incidents by providing continuous insights from an outside-in perspective to help eliminate blind spots and detect risks. The platform automates manual tasks, data operations and alerts allowing users to do a better job of resource placement and prioritization.

Cybersprint claims that attack prevention is cheaper than incident response. The service also supports compliance by assisting companies in abiding by regulatory requirements set by authorities and industry-specific policies.

Darktrace will use Cybersprint’s offer to enrich its existing detect and response products with external vulnerability data. The deal will also accelerate Darktrace’s market entry into new areas like proactive artificial intelligence cybersecurity.

“Bringing inside-out and outside-in visibility together is critical and having access to the robust, rich, real-time external dataset combined with Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI means that customers get a holistic view of prioritized cyber risks to harden the parts of their organization that are most vulnerable,” Poppy Gustafsson, CEO of Darktrace, said in a statement. “With this acquisition, we are able to leverage Cybersprint’s seven years of R&D to accelerate our Prevent product family, ultimately making it much harder for cyber-attackers to carry out successful missions.”

Coming into its acquisition, Cybersprint had raised  €2.7 million ($3.05 million), according to Crunchbase. Investors include KPN Ventures, Vortex Capital Partners and InnovationQuarter.

Image: RM Media