Network security management company Tenable Holdings Inc. today announced its intent to acquire Israeli cloud security startup Ermetic Ltd., the developer of an integrated cloud-native application protection platform and a provider of cloud infrastructure entitlement management.

According to the agreement, Tenable will furnish about $240 million in cash and $25 million in restricted stock, subject to price adjustments.

Founded in 2019, Ermetic built itself as a leader in the cloud infrastructure entitlement and identity centric cloud security platform market with services and capabilities such as allowing the automation of risk analysis, understanding user entitlements, risk prioritization and automated remediation. The company serves companies of all sizes, including Fortune 50 companies, to deal with access risks by securing loud data and helping professionals deal with network security issues.

Ermetic’s tools allow cloud teams to build, deploy and run secure cloud applications using an all-in-one software platform that simplifies monitoring, detecting and acting on potential cloud security vulnerabilities. It does so with a central control dashboard that unifies all security capabilities and access management. For example, it can track if a particular user had access to certain network areas, such as a cloud database administrator. If the account should be compromised, it would become a potential vulnerability, making managing the access to sensitive resources an important mechanism to automate.

The company recently released a feature called CNAPPgoat, an open-source project that allows organizations to test their own cloud security skills, processes and tools in a sandbox environment. Using this new tool, security teams can set up their own “risk scenarios” and run through them in order to test CNAPP platforms and tools.

“Together, we will be able to deliver a holistic view of the modern attack surface and help organizations reduce exposure and risk, using identity as an essential foundation,” said Amit Yoran, chairman and chief executive officer of Tenable.

Tenable intends to add Ermetic’s capabilities insights into Tenable One, the company’s unified system for cloud and on-premises asset visibility and associated vulnerabilities in one exposure management platform. Tenable One identifies assets across an entire attack surface and aggregates vulnerability data from enterprise infrastructure, web apps, public cloud and identity management systems. Security teams can then better prepare themselves for attack with a broad view of exposures, privileges and attack paths through their networks.

“The combination of Tenable’s rich exposure management data and Ermetic’s cloud solutions will provide unprecedented levels of actionable visibility and value,” said Shai Morag, co-founder and CEO of Ermetic. “It will remove the complexity that makes managing cloud environments so challenging.”

In December 2021, Ermetic raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Qumra Capital and has raised a total of $100 million since launch.

The deal is expected to close sometime early in the fourth quarter of 2023, subject to ordinary conditions set down in the contract.

This will be Tenable’s sixth acquisition since the company’s initial public offering in 2018, the most recent of which was in 2022 when Tenable acquired the external attack surface management startup Bit Discovery Inc. for $45 million. Previous acquisitions include the attack path management startup Cymptom Labs Ltd. in February 2022 and Alsid SAS for $98 million in February 2021.

Image: Tenable