WatchGuard Strengthens Cloud Detection With Perimeters Buy

WatchGuard purchased a cloud application security startup founded by a longtime Cortica leader to boost identity threat detection, cloud posture management and shadow IT discovery.

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The Seattle-based MSP security stalwart said its acquisition of Wilmington, Delaware-based Perimeters will help organizations automate detection, prioritize risks and improve cloud visibility at scale, said WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski. He said the company became familiar with Perimeters.io as a customer and thought its technology was mature and strategically important enough to bring into WatchGuard.

“Our CISO bought their product and used their product, and ultimately, as we started using it, we fell in love with the technology and said, ‘This is the best technology available. Why not bring this into the WatchGuard family so that we could offer it to our 25,000 partners and million businesses worldwide that we’re supporting?'” Smolarski told ISMG.

Perimeters, founded in 2022, employs 30 people and hasn’t disclosed any outside funding. The company has been led since inception by Yaniv Hen, who previously spent nearly six years overseeing product and technology partnerships at autonomous AI provider Cortica. Hen will lead the cloud detection and response business inside WatchGuard (see: WatchGuard Strengthens MDR Services With ActZero Acquisition).

What Sets Perimeters’ Approach to Cloud App Defense Apart

Smolarski said Hen’s cybersecurity expertise and product leadership will be central to expanding the Perimeters platform and responding to customer demand for additional SaaS integrations. The Perimeters platform currently supports more than 40 SaaS integrations, and new integrations can often be completed in only a few days, Smolarski said.

“Every single individual is coming over,” Smolarski said. “We believe that a big part of the value of this acquisition is a fantastic team focused on development. They’re almost all engineers, and we’re feeling fantastic about them joining the team and taking our security portfolio to the next level.”

Cloud environments have become one of the most significant attack surfaces organizations now face because of the widespread adoption of SaaS platforms, cloud collaboration tools and distributed work environments, Smolarski said. Attackers are increasingly targeting cloud ecosystems because they provide direct access to sensitive business data and operational systems, he said.

“The threat landscape has changed, and we believe that one of the top attack surfaces, if not the top one, is cloud applications,” Smolarski said. “And I’ve seen it. I’ve got personal first-hand experience in in my previous companies in terms of the impact of losing millions and millions of dollars and dealing with all kinds of data breaches and everything else when a cloud application gets breached.”

Many vendors offer isolated point solutions focused solely on identity protection, posture management or shadow IT visibility, but Smolarski said only Perimeters combines those capabilities into a unified platform. The platform’s embedded AI capabilities helped WatchGuard view Perimeters as strategically aligned with the future direction of cybersecurity operations, Smolarski said.

“You look at those three areas, there really was one clear choice for a solution and that became Perimeters, and therefore that’s what we narrowed in on,” Smolarski said. “We are quite proud of having that as the foundation for WatchGuard cloud detection and response.”

How WatchGuard, Perimeters Will Come Together

WatchGuard has a 60-day integration road map focused on deeper operational alignment, with key priorities including event correlation, alert deduplication and integrating cloud detection telemetry into managed detection and response services. By correlating telemetry across cloud security, endpoint protection, firewall activity and MDR, WatchGuard hopes to only surface the most important threats.

“CloudDR is already a very, very powerful platform, but what they don’t have is an agent on the end user,” Smolarski said. “We have over a million companies using WatchGuard to protect their firms, and we have agents deployed. We have all other network traffic going through the firewall. So, that allows us to have a very, very, very deep perspective that no other firm has when it comes to CloudDR.”

Identity-based attacks are one of the fastest-growing threat categories in cybersecurity, with attackers compromising low-level employee accounts and then pivoting deeper into cloud systems to access financial data, SharePoint environments or customer records. Enterprises need independent security layers capable of identifying anomalies, detecting suspicious behavior quickly and responding, he said.

“The threat velocity on that attack surface is increasing exponentially, and you must be protected,” Smolarski said. “And you need to be protected on all levels, not just one respective area.”

IT teams are increasingly overwhelmed by the complexity of cloud environments and often lack the time or visibility needed to continuously audit configurations. As a result, he said exposed cloud resources, improperly configured applications and abandoned services create significant security gaps. In addition, unsanctioned applications can create hidden vulnerabilities and increase organizational exposure.

“We believe that CloudDR can be right there at the top from a revenue generation for WatchGuard, because the need is there,” Smolarski said. “It’s an urgent need for everybody. It’s an urgent need for our partners. We’re reacting, and we believe we’re bringing world-class technology to achieve those goals.”