Cloudflare looks to up security against cyber hacks with Area 1 acquisition

Cloudflare has agreed to acquire Area 1 Security for approximately $162 million to strengthen security against cyber attacks. The acquisition is expected to close early in the second quarter of 2022.   

The collaboration will work on the zero-trust security model that helps to mitigate the impact of cyberattacks across industries. Cloudflare claims that Area 1 Security’s cloud-native platform works seamlessly with any email offering and stops phishing attacks by pre-emptively discovering and eliminating them before they can inflict damage in a corporate environment. 

Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, said, “To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organisation’s applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email. Together, we expect we’ll be delivering the fastest, most effective, and most reliable email security on the market.” 

Cloudflare also affirmed that by combining its global network, data capabilities, scalable technology and years of experience in email protection along with Area 1 Security’s phishing protection and threat intelligence capabilities, the two companies will help organisations of any size secure their entire network infrastructure and better protect against the most destructive cyber risks.

Last year, Area 1 Security blocked more than 40 million malicious phishing campaigns spanning business email compromise, malware, ransomware, and other advanced threats. 

“Today, email is a business’ most-used cloud application. It’s unfortunately unprotected. We estimate that more than 90% of cyber security damages are the result of just one thing: phishing,” said Patrick Sweeney, CEO and President of Area 1 Security. 

While most organisations have a vision of zero-trust or are in the process of implementing zero-trust initiatives, more than half of organisations cannot translate this vision into the solutions they are implementing because they lack some basic core fundamentals of zero-trust, as per a Fortinet report.

“With the evolving threat landscape, transition to work-from-anywhere, and the need to securely manage applications in the cloud, the shift from implicit trust to zero trust is top of mind for organisations,” said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet.