FireEye acquires X15 Software to combat more next-gen threats

FireEye, the intelligence-led security company, bought X15 Software for US$20 million to add big data tools to its security products. X15 software’s big data platform will provide the flexibility to collect, query and analyze machine-generated security data across cloud and on-premise environments. The deal was closed on January 11, 2018.

The privately held X15 Software has technology that will provide customers with an open platform for integrating machine learning and big data to adapt to the evolving threat environment. The software also integrates with analytics platforms such as Tableau and Qlik, and its partners include companies such as Cloudera, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and MapR.

FireEye senior vice president of engineering, John Laliberte said, “Organizations today are overwhelmed by alerts, the number of tools required to manage their security operations, and the challenge of unifying access to the large volumes of data that matter. The X15 Software team built an incredibly versatile, enterprise-grade big data platform that enables distributed, real-time access and ingestion of data at scale within a unified data model and modular query language. X15 Software technology will accelerate our strategy of delivering an innovative, next-gen security platform.”

According to the terms of the acquisition agreement, FireEye is supposed to pay approximately US$15 million in equity and US$5 million in cash. The acquisition is believed to extend the company’s intelligence lead and help it provide unmatchable service offerings.