Juniper grabs virtual firewall vendor

Vendor beefs up virtualisation security capabilities with $95m acquisition of startup Altor Networks

Juniper Networks has cited the growing importance of cloud-based server security as the impetus behind its acquisition of Altor Networks.

The networking and security giant has stumped up about $95m (£61m) in cash for the Californian startup, which was founded in 2007 by former executives of Check Point, Cisco and Oracle.

Juniper said end users were becoming increasingly concerned about server security in the cloud as they rely more and more on virtual servers for critical applications.

Altor is well placed to address this challenge with its hypervisor-based firewall, on-board intrusion detection, network visibility and monitoring capabilities, it added. The acquisition follows a venture investment Juniper made into Altor in early 2010.

Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president, service layer technologies at Juniper, said: “Juniper is excited to acquire one of the industry's leading virtualisation security vendors and the extremely talented team that built it."

Amir Ben-Efraim, chief executive and co-founder of Altor Networks, said: “Today, we join forces with Juniper, which shares a common vision for securing datacentres and the cloud, and together we look forward to extending our leadership in the VM security market.”