Akamai Buying Cyber Firm Guardicore for $600M

“If you want to stop ransomware, you need Guardicore,” said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on an investor call Wednesday, explaining the company’s rationale for buying the “micro-segmentation” cybersecurity systems provider. It's paying $600 million cash, said Akamai Chief Financial Officer Ed McGowan. The transaction is expected to close in Q4. Enterprises are confronting “a rapidly evolving threat landscape, with sophisticated attackers who are trying to steal their data, disrupt their operations and extort them for large sums,” said Leighton. “Recent growth of ransomware and other malware-based attacks is explosive,” he said, citing estimates that ransomware-infected devices jumped “35-fold” last year. Attack costs are expected to exceed $20 billion globally this year, he said. Leighton knows of Illumio as Guardicore’s only direct competitor, he said. Akamai/Guardicore "further underscores the critical need" for zero trust micro-segmentation "as a core component of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy," emailed Illumio CEO Andrew Rubin. "Akamai is the latest company to react to customers’ recognition of the vital role" that micro-segmentation plays in improving an organization's "security posture, increasing cyber-resiliency and preventing cyber catastrophes," he said. "The need for a new approach to cybersecurity has been reinforced by the barrage of ransomware attacks we have witnessed over the past 12 months."