Microsoft acquires Israeli security firm Aorato

Acquisition will be its fifth non-US purchase this year

Microsoft yesterday announced the acquisition of enterprise security provider Aorato as it aims to give its customers better defence against hybrid cloud intruders.

Aorato was founded in 2011 by veterans of the Israeli defence forces and its focus is on enterprise services in the cloud and in hybrid on-premise and cloud environments.

The sum of the acquisition was undisclosed, but the Wall Street Journal noted in July that Microsoft was in talks to buy Aorato and estimated a possible price at $200m (£128m).

On the Microsoft blog, it stated: "We are making this acquisition to give customers a new level of protection against threats through better visibility into their identity infrastructure.

"With Aorato we will accelerate our ability to give customers powerful identity and access solutions that span on-premises and the cloud, which is central to our overall hybrid-cloud strategy."

The acquisition will be Microsoft's fifth non-US based company it has bought this year.

The news of the acquisition comes just one week after the US vendor announced its alliance with DropBox.