VMware puts security first with Lastline acquisition

Move to buy anti-malware vendor hailed as important step forward for VMware's 'Intrinsic Security' vision

Virtualisation giant VMware has made another cybersecurity acquisition, announcing its intent to snap up network detection and response vendor Lastline.

The agreement - set to close by 31 July - comes on the heels of VMware's $2.1bn acquisition of endpoint protection vendor Carbon Black last August, with VMware priming Lastline's malware analysis as a "critical feed" for its Carbon Black EDR platform.

"This is an important step forward for VMware's vision of Intrinsic Security, as it will allow us to further take advantage of the intrinsic attributes of our virtualisation platform to yield innovative security capabilities," Tom Gillis, SVP and GM, Networking and Security Business Unit, VMware, stated.

"Our aim is not to replicate that which exists today, but rather to build security solutions that we can uniquely deliver, spanning from the heart of the data center to users in a branch office and all the way to mobile users at home or on the road."

The transaction has received the approval of both companies' boards, but is potentially subject to certain regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to close in VMware's Q2 ending 31 July.

Counting its core product as a malware sandbox, Lastline boasts several of the top ten most published security threat researchers globally and has 15 PHDs and academics on staff, Gillis boasted.

He claimed Lastline's system detects twice the number of malicious files as a signature-based system, "detonating" more than five million files samples globally.

"...This brings us to the powerful combination of VMware and Lastline. VMware NSX has deep visibility into network traffic, touching every packet," Gillis added.

"The NSX architecture will allow Lastline to perform network analytics at massive scale, across tens of thousands of cores, without the burden of tapping network traffic."