Palo Alto Networks buys Cyvera for $200M to protect firms from zero-day cyber attacks

Network security firm Palo Alto Networks is beefing up its offerings today with the $200 million acquisition of Cyvera, whose technology senses and protects networks from potentially damaging zero-day exploits — named after the fact that we see them for the first time when a hacker decides to employ them.

Palo Alto Networks is best known for its powerful firewall and cloud threat detection service, which handles the vast majority of threats on networks. But for more advanced zero-day attacks, it needed something more.

“The composition of today’s cyber attacks typically involves three stages: identify a new vulnerability, employ a technique to exploit that vulnerability, and use that vulnerability to then launch malware and ultimately take control of the endpoint,” the company wrote in a blog post today. “Each year … thousands of new vulnerabilities emerge. And with millions of new malware instances found each year that increasingly are capable of evading existing controls, traditional security approaches simply aren’t effective. A new approach is required.”

Cyvera’s technology will ultimately protect Palo Alto Networks’ customers from attacks that aren’t widely known by detecting the way hackers exploit networks. Those sorts of attacks typically elude security software, since security firms haven’t had a chance to dig into what makes them tick.

Isreal-based Cyvera raised $11 million from Blumberg Capital, Battery Ventures, and others. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this fiscal year.