Bitsight acquires threat intelligence provider Cybersixgill for $115M – News

Bitsight Technologies Inc. has inked a $115 million deal to buy Cybersixgill Inc., a fellow cybersecurity startup that collects information about hacker activities.

The companies announced the acquisition today.

Boston-based Bitsight is backed by about $400 million in venture funding. It raised the bulk of that sum, $250 million, from credit ratings agency Moody’s Corp. in a 2021 deal. Bitsight provides a platform that can map out a company’s technology assets, scan them for cybersecurity issues and then rank the discovered vulnerabilities by severity. 

The software maker also offers a number of other features. One tool, Trust Management Hub, helps companies demonstrate the security of their infrastructure to customers. Additionally, Bitsight has built an analytics engine that enables organizations to identify areas for improvement in their breach prevention programs and check how they compare against industry peers. 

Cybersixgill, meanwhile, provides a cloud-based threat intelligence platform. The service gives organizations access to data about hacking campaigns that they can use to inform their breach detection and mitigation efforts. The company counts multiple Fortune 500 enterprises among its customers.

It says that it collects several million data points daily from about 1,000 hacker forums and marketplaces. According to Cybersixgill, its algorithms gather records such as deleted posts that are often difficult for other threat intelligence platforms to access. Meanwhile, an artificial intelligence feature called Cybersixgill IQ distills the raw data collected by the company into natural language summaries that are easier for information technology teams to analyze. 

Customers have the option to customize the platform’s data feeds. Using a built-in alerting tool, administrators can have Cybersixgill notify them if records belonging to employees or customers shows up in a hacker forum. When researchers discover a vulnerability in a software product, the platform correlates it with external data points to determine what risk it may pose to a company’s systems. 

Bitsight plans to integrate Cybersixgill’s technology into its software portfolio after the acquisition closes. According to the companies, the goal is to help organizations more easily put threat intelligence to use. Additionally, Bitsight will apply Cybersixgill’s AI features to its internal repository of cybersecurity data. 

“With the integration of Cybersixgill’s team and technology, we can deliver even deeper insights to Bitsight customers about the targeted threats unique to their infrastructure,” said Bitsight Chief Executive Officer Steve Harvey.

The deal is not the company’s first acquisition. In 2021, it acquired a startup called VisibleRisk Inc. that likewise counted Moody’s as an investor. The deal bought Bitsight a platform that uses simulated cyberattacks to evaluate the effectiveness of companies’ cybersecurity systems. 

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