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The Biggest Cybersecurity News Items During the First Half of 2021

The Biggest Cybersecurity News Items During the First Half of 2021

Our editors curated this list of the biggest cybersecurity news items during the first half of 2021, as highlighted on Solutions Review.

Cybersecurity is one of the most critical industries in the modern digital age, rapidly growing as more organizations release their own needs to defend against threat actors. The proliferation of cyber-attacks only continues to grow as well, with several high-profile ransomware attacks and data breaches serving as wake-up calls to businesses. Further, evidence suggests that customers abandon companies that suffer from data breaches en masse, as they no longer feel their data is safe with breached companies. 

Part of Solutions Review’s ongoing analysis of the cybersecurity marketplace includes covering the biggest cybersecurity news stories which have the greatest impact on enterprise technologists. This is a curated list of the most important cybersecurity news stories from the first half of 2021. For more on the space, including the newest product releases, funding rounds, and mergers and acquisitions, follow our popular news section.


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The Biggest Cybersecurity News Items During the First Half of 2021

LogRhythm Announces Acquisition of MistNet, Threat Detection Platform (January)

LogRhythm announced its acquisition of MistNet, a threat detection platform. MistNet provides cloud-based analytics to enhance visibility and threat hunting. According to a press release by LogRhythm, the acquisition expands the solution provider’s reach into the threat detection market and accelerates their entry into the XDR market.

Mark Logan, President and CEO of LogRhythm, shared his thoughts on the deal. “I am thrilled to announce the acquisition of MistNet. Their solution will facilitate our goal of addressing current and emerging endpoint security needs for our global customers and partners. MistNet complements our existing SIEM platform by enhancing deep network visibility, behavior analytics, and threat detection capabilities and will accelerate LogRhythm’s reach into the XDR market.”

SentinelOne Announces Acquisition of Scalyr for XDR Platform (February)

SentinelOne announced its acquisition of Scalyr for $155 million in equity and cash. It appears the SentinelOne aims to use this deal to dive even more fully into the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) market.

Tomer Weingarten, co-founder and CEO of SentinelOne, commented on the acquisition. “Scalyr’s big data technology is perfect for the use cases of XDR, ingesting terabytes of data across multiple systems and correlating it at machine speed so security professionals have actionable intelligence to autonomously detect, respond, and mitigate threats.”

“This is a dramatic leap forward for our industry – while other next-gen products are entirely reliant on SIEM integrations or OEMs for point in time data correlation and response, SentinelOne uniquely provides customers with proactive operational insights from a security-first perspective. The combination of Scalyr’s data analytics with our industry-leading AI capabilities ushers in a new era of machine-speed prevention, detection, and response to attacks across the enterprise.”

Palo Alto Networks Announces Plan to Acquire Bridgecrew (February)

Palo Alto Networks announced its intentions to acquire Bridgecrew, a developer-first cloud security company. According to a press release, Palo Alto Networks plans to spend $156 million in cash for the acquisition; the proposed acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal third quarter.

Through the acquisition of Bridgecrew, Palo Alto plans to enable “shift left” security, enabling its Prisma Cloud to secure the entire application lifecycle. Shift Left security focuses on infrastructure as code (IaC), where infrastructure configuration is codified during development.

Okta Acquires Auth0 In $6.5 Billion Deal (March)

Okta announced its intention to acquire Auth0; the deal will take place through a stock transaction valued at approximately $6.5 billion. The deal should close during Okta’s second quarter of fiscal year 2022.

Todd McKinnon, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Okta gave a statement with the announcement. “In an increasingly digital world, identity is the unifying means by which we use technology — both at work and in our personal lives. With so much at stake for businesses today, it’s critical that we deliver trusted customer-facing identity solutions. Okta’s and Auth0’s shared vision for the identity market, rooted in customer success, will accelerate our innovation, opening up new ways for our customers to leverage identity to meet their business needs. We are thrilled to join forces with the Auth0 team, as they are ideal allies in building identity for the internet and establishing identity as a primary cloud.”

Jumio Secures $150 Million Investment For Automation, Innovation (March)

Jumio announced securing $150 million through an investment from private equity firm Great Hill Partners. The investment represents one of the largest funding rounds in the digital identity security marketplace.

According to a press release, Jumio plans to use the investment by “devoting additional resources to automate its identity verification solutions, expand[ing] the breadth of the Jumio KYX Platform and grow[ing] its suite of AML compliance services.” The investment could also represent a turning point for the identity security market in general, given its size and significance.

AT&T Cybersecurity Launches Managed Endpoint Security Solution (April)

AT&T Cybersecurity announced the launch of a managed endpoint security solution. This solution stems from an alliance with SentinelOne. The AT&T Managed Endpoint Security with SentinelOne is designed to correlate the detection of endpoint threats through a single software agent.

According to a press release, the AT&T Managed Endpoint Security with SentinelOne solution features antivirus, endpoint protection, endpoint detection and response, and IoT security functions. Moreover, it includes 24×7 threat monitoring and management by AT&T Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts. It emphasizes greater visibility through continuous monitoring as well as orchestrated and automated incident response.

Thycotic and Centrify Merge into ThycoticCentrify (April)

Thycotic and Centrify recently announced completing a previously-announced merger between the two privileged access management providers. Operating under the temporary name ThycoticCentrify, the new company is beginning its product and capability integrations as part of its goal to provide an extensive platform in cloud privileged identity security.

The new cybersecurity provider expects to debut a new brand in the second half of 2021. A press release describing the finalization of the merger notes the focus on deployment speed and PAM-as-a-Service offerings as it looks to carve a new identity for itself in the market; it especially focuses on the challenges to privileged users in the cloud, exacerbated by the pandemic and mass work-from-home policies.

Those are our picks for the biggest cybersecurity news items during the first half of 2021. For more on Solutions Review’s market analysis, check out the SIEM Buyer’s Guide.


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