The cybersecurity vendor’s move to acquire Secureworks from Dell Technologies comes as part of a push at Sophos into offering enhanced threat detection and response.
Sophos completed its $859 million acquisition of Secureworks Monday as part of its push into offering enhanced threat detection and response.
The cybersecurity vendor also disclosed that Secureworks CEO Wendy Thomas will not be joining the combined company in a permanent role.
[Related: Sophos-Secureworks Merger: 5 Big Partner Takeaways]
“Wendy Thomas will stay with Sophos for a short period of time following the acquisition close to ensure a seamless transition and to help guide the early integration process,” Sophos CEO Joe Levy said in a statement provided to CRN Monday.
Levy called Thomas an “exceptional leader” who led Secureworks “through multiple acquisitions, a successful initial public offering in 2015, and the launch of Taegis.”
“Her vision transformed Secureworks from a pure-play security services organization to a leading global SaaS cybersecurity company,” Levy said in the statement.
Sophos, which is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, has acquired Secureworks from its majority owner Dell Technologies.
Initially announced in October, the acquisition deal has been targeted at improving security for SMB and midmarket customers, Levy told CRN previously.
Solution providers have applauded Sophos’ move to acquire Secureworks, a specialist in extended detection and response (XDR).
Sophos undoubtedly will have a “more complete offering” in detection and response by combining with Secureworks, said Jason Norred, CISO at Littleton, Colo.-based Solutions II, in a previous interview.
XDR ‘Convergence’
A fast-growing category in cybersecurity, XDR aims to provide enhanced security covering more than just endpoints through correlating data from across an organization’s environments and devices and then prioritizing the most serious threats for a response.
Speaking with CRN in October, Levy said a key opportunity is for the combined company to bring a “superior” model when it comes to security operations—which in fact will “accelerate the convergence” of XDR and SIEM (security information and event management).
“There’s tremendous value in the technology that Secureworks has built in their Taegis platform,” he said in the previous interview.
Thomas, who had served as CEO of Secureworks since 2021, said in October that the aim is to create a combined company that can be an even more formidable player in the battle against cybercriminals who target SMBs and midmarket organizations.
“I think when you bring two significant players together with both technology and the best of managed detection and response services together, you’re able to bring enterprise-grade security outcomes that become accessible to the market at an affordability—and an ease of implementation—that changes the industry,” she said at the time.
A few specific areas cited previously by Levy included Secureworks’ vulnerability detection and response capabilities, which “we know is going to be very valuable to our customers,” he said.
Levy also pointed to the identity threat detection and response (ITDR) offering from Secureworks, which will augment Sophos’ existing ITDR capabilities in the Microsoft ecosystem.
“The ITDR capabilities that Secureworks has built are ahead of most of the other security offerings that we’ve seen in the space. So there’s incredible value there,” he said.
The acquisition will also mean massive new opportunities for partners including MSPs, according to Levy.
The focus on meeting the needs of partners is “going to be fundamental to the way that we bring these companies together,” Levy said previously.
