{"id":44944,"date":"2021-08-17T16:48:06","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T08:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=44944"},"modified":"2021-08-17T16:48:12","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T08:48:12","slug":"sophos-acquires-refactr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2021\/08\/17\/sophos-acquires-refactr\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophos acquires Refactr"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sophos<\/a>, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity, announced that it has acquired Refactr, which develops and markets a versatile development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) automation platform that bridges the gap between development and operations (DevOps) and cybersecurity. Based in Bellevue, Washington, Refactr launched in 2017 and is privately held.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As DevOps and security teams continue to adopt \u201cIT-as-Code\u201d approaches to managing their environments, Refactr\u2019s ability to automate any of these processes enables teams to scale. For example, with Refactr\u2019s platform, DevOps teams can augment existing continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI\/CD) workflows, and cybersecurity teams can leverage the platform\u2019s visual drag and drop builder. Refactr has leading customers in both the private and government\/public sectors, including the Center for Internet Security<\/a> and the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Platform One<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophos is optimizing Refactr\u2019s DevSecOps automation platform to add Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to its Managed Threat Response (MTR)<\/a> and Extended Detection and Response (XDR)<\/a> solutions. The SOAR capabilities will also help automate Sophos\u2019 Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem<\/a>, which underpins all of Sophos\u2019 product solutions, services, threat intelligence, and data lake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Gartner,\u00a0“the\u00a0security technology market, in general, is in a state of overload, with pressure on budgets, staff shortages and too many point solutions. Customers often cite problems with an overload of events or alerts,\u00a0complexity\u00a0and duplication of tools. As a general practice, automation promises to solve many of these problems and, in cybersecurity, SOAR is the primary vehicle for this functionality.\u201d\u00a0Gartner further notes that\u00a0\u201cproposed use cases for SOAR include everything from the automation of rote SOC tasks to the streamlining of niche and complex workflows. With appropriate preparation, the commitment of the right skills and resources, and careful use-case-centric planning, SOAR can deliver on the promises of reduced event overload, increased detection accuracy, team scalability, reduced time to detection and overall better security operations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophos\u2019 Active Adversary Playbook 2021<\/a> has identified clear correlations among the top five tools used by adversaries that IT administrators and security professionals use in their everyday tasks. The report also revealed that 37 attack groups used more than 400 different tools between them. The median attacker dwell time before detection was 11 days, providing attackers with up to 264 hours for malicious activity, from lateral movement, reconnaissance, credential dumping, data exfiltration, and more. Early detection and response through automation can help minimize these statistics and improve security against attackers who are constantly looking for new ways to gain entry and a foothold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst-generation SOAR solutions have moved our industry forward in significant ways, but we\u2019re now witnessing an evolution where more and more businesses are becoming software companies, and our security solutions need to evolve in parallel. As we\u2019ve seen in recent supply-chain incidents, attackers are increasingly targeting software development pipelines, and defenders need the ability to shift further left of attackers. The industry needs SOAR to mature into more capable and generalizable DevSecOps solutions, and Sophos\u2019 acquisition of Refactr will help us lead the way,\u201d said Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos. “With Refactr, Sophos will fast track the integration of such advanced SOAR capabilities into our Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, the basis for our XDR product and MTR service. We will provide a full spectrum of automated playbooks for our customers and partners, from drag-and-drop to fully programmable, along with broad integrations with third-party solutions through our technology alliances program to work with today\u2019s diverse IT environments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophos will continue to develop and offer Refactr\u2019s platform to their existing and growing base of partners and organizations that want to build customized IT and security automations for themselves and for their customers. Refactr\u2019s Community<\/a> Edition will continue to be available as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe created the Refactr platform so that every organization can deliver effective DevSecOps through holistic security-first automation. Our platform was purpose-built to be versatile, interoperable and easy to use. Cybersecurity teams can now collaborate with DevOps to easily build complicated IT automation and security integrations through DevSecOps pipelines,\u201d said Michael Fraser, CEO and co-founder, Refactr. \u201cOur mission is to enable DevSecOps to become the modern approach to automation, where cybersecurity use cases like SOAR, XDR, compliance, cloud security, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) become building blocks for DevSecOps solutions. We are already seeing success in providing organizations our emerging technology, including the Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air Force. We are proud of what we accomplished at Refactr, and excited for the next part of our journey with Sophos to help create a more secure world through DevSecOps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refactr\u2019s entire team of developers and engineers have joined Sophos. In addition to the continued offering of the Refactr platform, Sophos plans to begin offering SOAR options by early 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sophos is optimizing Refactr\u2019s DevSecOps automation platform to add Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to its Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":37762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[206,4328,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-44944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-sophos","tag-sophoslabs","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}