Tenable Inc. today announced an agreement to acquire Bit Discovery Inc., an external attack surface management startup, for $45.5 million in an all-cash deal.

Founded in 2018, Bit Discovery offers a platform for website asset inventory and portfolio management. The service provides attack surface management to identify and manage internet-connected assets.

Bit Discovery’s platform is designed to eliminate the problem of organizations being blind to the full and ever-changing scope of internet-facing assets and services. The company’s EASM continuously monitors the internet, allowing customers to rapidly discover and identify all externally facing assets that could be exposed to and targeted by cybercriminals.

Notable Bit Discovery clients include NTT Security AppSec Solutions Inc., Redshield Security Ltd., Bugcrowd Inc., Security Compass Technologies Ltd., SecTheory Ltd., Moonlight Labs and SaltWorks Inc.

Bit Discovery’s EASM capabilities will be merged with Tenable’s cybersecurity exposure solutions to provide customers with a 360-degree view of the modern attack surface — both inside and out — to identify and eliminate areas of known and unknown security risk.

Tenable plans to leverage Bit Discovery’s EASM solutions across its entire portfolio, including enterprise vulnerability management, its Nessus vulnerability assessment service, cloud, operational technology and identity. The company says that once the technology is integrated, customers will have the ability to assess the security posture of their entire attack surface and understand each of these in the context of an attack path that might exist from external systems to critical assets.

“Whatever is visible on the internet is very likely to be the first target and the hardest thing for organizations to continuously see and assess,” Glen Pendley, chief technology officer at Tenable, said in a statement. “We believe attack surface management is vital to modern cybersecurity and an integral part of our vulnerability and cyber exposure solutions. We are seamlessly combining previously disjointed insights and empowering security practitioners to eliminate blind spots and easily understand their cyber exposure in ways previously not possible.”

Before its acquisition, Bit Discovery had raised $6.6 million in venture capital funding, including a round of $4 million from Might Capital and Aligned Partners in June. The deal is subject to customary purchase price adjustments and is expected to close in the second quarter.

The deal to buy Bit Discovery is Tenable’s sixth acquisition. Previous purchases included Cymptom Labs Ltd. in February and Alsid SAS for $98 million in February 2021.

Image: Bit Defender