Forcepoint joins CASB feeding frenzy with Skyfence buy

Following the acquisitions of cloud access security brokers Elastica, CloudLock and Palerra, Forcepoint has got in on the act by acquiring one of its OEM partners

Forcepoint has become the latest security vendor to buy its way into the cloud access security broker (CASB) market by acquiring Skyfence from Imperva Networks.

Tipped as the IT security market's most smoking-hot technology by Gartner last year, the CASB space has seen a rash of consolidation in recent months.

Following on from Blue Coat's $280m acquisition of Elastica in November 2015, last year Cisco grabbed CASB outfit CloudLock for $293m, while Oracle snapped up Palerra.

Based out of Israel, Skyfence aims to provide visibility and control over cloud applications approved for use by an organisation, such as NetSuite, Office 365, Salesforce or Workday, as well as those employees might use without approval, such as Dropbox and Box.

Forcepoint's acquisition of Skyfence builds on a licensing arrangement it struck with the firm in March 2015 to embed its Cloud App Catalog into its web security gateway products.

"As cloud applications become more pervasive, customers are trying to strike a balance between the benefits these services offer and the risks that exist," said Kris Lamb, general manager of the Cloud Security business at Forcepoint.

"Integrating Skyfence with Forcepoint's cloud security platform will offer the best of both worlds. Businesses will feel comfortable providing the productivity benefits cloud services offer, while not jeopardising the security of critical data and improving their overall governance and compliance posture."

To illustrate its rationale for the acquisition, Forcepoint cited Gartner figures predicted that 85 per cent of large enterprises will use a CASB platform for their cloud services by 2020, up from less than five per cent today.

Despite disposing of Skyfence, M&A has been a two-way street for Imperva this month, with the vendor buying data masking outfit Camouflage Systems at the start of February.