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Symantec to acquire Fireglass, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that thwarts malware and phishing attacks

@psawers
The Symantec booth is seen during the 2016 Black Hat cyber-security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. August 3, 2016.
Image Credit: REUTERS/David Becker/File Photo

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Security software giant Symantec has announced plans to acquire Israeli enterprise cybersecurity company Fireglass. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded out of Tel Aviv in 2014, Fireglass specializes in helping companies thwart malware and phishing attacks by preventing harmful content from breaching a company’s defences. Even if an employee does click on a spurious link in an email or visit an insecure website, for example, all content and attachments are executed in an environment separate and isolated from that in which the company operates.

Fireglass had raised a $20 million round of funding last November from such notable investors as Norwest and Lightspeed. As a result of this acquisition, Symantec said that it will integrate Fireglass into its own existing cyber defense services.

“Integrating Fireglass’ isolation technology with Symantec’s existing endpoint, email, and secure web gateway solutions could reduce security events by as much as 70 percent, while virtually eliminating advanced threats spread by web browsing or email content,” explained Symantec CEO Greg Clark. “Isolation will become a core component in the design of cyber defense architectures for the cloud generation who face the reality of an encrypted internet and the crisis inherent in email and web-delivered attacks.”

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Israel has emerged as a hotbed of cybersecurity and cloud-focused startups, with Microsoft recently snapping up Hexadite to bring AI to Windows 10 enterprise security.

Symantec, for its part, is no stranger to bolstering its online security credentials through acquisitions. Back in November, it bought identity theft protection company LifeLock for $2.3 billion, following its $4.65 billion acquisition of web security company Blue Coat Systems five months earlier.

Symantec said that it expects the Fireglass deal to close in Q3 2017.