Palo Alto announces acquisition of Cider Security

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – During its Q1 2023 financial results webcast Palo Alto Networks announced it had signed a definitive agreement to Israeli cybersecurity company Cider Security.

Palo Alto Networks said that with the addition of Cider Security’s software supply chain security capabilities, combined with the recent announced Software Composition Analysis (SCA) capabilities, the Prisma Cloud security platform becomes a “must-have” for organizations using cloud security.

Citing the diverse and dynamic nature of modern software engineering ecosystems Palo Alto Networks said the supply chain has emerged as one of the more vulnerable targets likely to be hit by cybercriminals. "Any organization using public cloud has an application infrastructure with hundreds of tools and applications that can access their code and yet, they have limited visibility to their configuration or if they are secured," said Lee Klarich, Chief Product Officer for Palo Alto Networks. "Cider has made it possible to connect into infrastructure, analyze the tools, and identify the risks, as well as how to remediate them. We are acquiring Cider for their innovation that will help enable Prisma Cloud to provide this capability that anyone doing cloud operations has to have."

“We’re doubling down on investing in software supply chain security,” Palo Alto’s CEO and Chairman Nikesh Arora told investors during the webcast in what he described as shifting left toward success. “Today we announce our intent to acquire Cider Security, which is key to this strategy. Cider brings the ability to visualize customers application development and deployment environment, analyze the tools, identify risks and how to remediate them. This ability to secure the software supply chain is backed up by Cider’s leading CICD security research team.” Arora said the acquisition furthers Palo Alto Network’s leadership in cloud security.

The terms of the agreement see Cider Security acquired for roughly $195 million in cash, excluding the value of replacement equity awards, subject to adjustment. The acquisition is expected to close in the second fiscal quarter of 2023 and is not expected to have a material impact on the company’s financials.

"We designed an AppSec platform that allows engineering to continue to move fast, without making compromises on security. It's only fitting that we join Palo Alto Networks, a company built upon landmark cybersecurity 'firsts." There couldn't be a better fit for Cider," noted Guy Flechter, CEO at Cider Security. "By scanning and securing the CI/CD pipeline, we can help identify where there may be vulnerabilities in your code. Prisma Cloud will now be the ultimate solution for code to cloud security."

The company’s Q1 results and the announcement of their acquisition of Cider Security provided a nice 5 percent bump to the share price following the announcement on Nov. 17. The company’s projections show a strong revenue gain for the second quarter 2023 with year-over-year growth of between 24 percent and 26 percent.