ForeScout Technologies, the Internet of Things security company, has today announced the acquisition of SecurityMatters, the operational technology (OT) network protection company, for approximately $113 million in cash, subject to customary adjustments.

The acquisition will bolster ForeScout’s position in agentless device visibility and control across the extended enterprise, with expanded capabilities and advanced features to secure OT and industrial environments.

“ForeScout’s acquisition of SecurityMatters is a natural fit as it takes us deeper into a market where we have an established foothold and are seeing explosive customer demand,” said Michael DeCesare, CEO and president, ForeScout Technologies.

“SecurityMatters’ technology and talent will accelerate our success in securing OT, expand our total addressable market and reinforce our solution as the industry’s only, end-to-end agentless device visibility and control platform.”

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The convergence of IT and OT

The convergence of IT and OT is driving a rapid rise of interconnectivity and introducing new risks for enterprises; as OT networks may no longer be physically segregated from the IT network.

Recent cyber attacks, such as WannaCry, NotPetya and Triton, demonstrated how vulnerable these networks are, which can result in significant business disruption and financial loss.

According to Forrester research, 79% of organisations with a SCADA/ICS network have suffered a breach in the past 24 months.

“Virtually every company with OT needs to rethink its cyber security strategy,” said Damiano Bolzoni, founder and CEO, SecurityMatters. “After partnering with ForeScout for the last year, it became clear that we shared the same vision. Now as a single company, we will be able to accelerate our momentum and create the industry’s first capability to truly segment IT and OT environments.”

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ForeScout’s acquisition of SecurityMatters will enable its vision to:

• Provide deeper visibility into OT and ICS environments: SecurityMatters’ passive network monitoring and protocol analysis combined with ForeScout’s leading visibility platform will enable device discovery, classification and assessment for the full spectrum of devices across IT and OT.

• Deliver end-to-end OT risk awareness and compliance management: Merging SecurityMatters’ passive assessment capabilities with ForeScout’s passive and active inspection for Windows, Linux and all other IT/IoT devices, will allow security teams to have a complete view of their risk profile and compliance state for the entirety of their OT environments for the first time.

• Enable dynamic network segmentation across the entire enterprise: By identifying and classifying OT network traffic, SecurityMatters will help ForeScout extend its segmentation and policy orchestration vision to OT devices and networks.

• Automate rapid detection and incident response for OT: Improve threat response by leveraging SecurityMatters’ detection engine for ICS-specific threat indicators and behavioral anomalies in conjunction with ForeScout’s contextual understanding of IT layers, and ability to orchestrate remediation through its vast technology partner ecosystem.