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A key theme of Oracle’s OpenWorld event this week is the cloud, which is why it should come as no surprise that the company is investing in cloud security. On Sept. 18, Oracle announced that it is acquiring privately held cloud access security broker (CASB) vendor Palerra. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed at this time.
Palerra has raised $25 million in venture capital since the company was founded in 2013. The most recent round of funding came in April 2015, when Palerra raised a $17 million Series B round of funding from investors August Capital, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Wing Venture Capital and Engineering Capital.
Palerra’s core product is Loric, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that can integrate with an enterprise’s on-premises security and directory systems. Loric is what is known as a CASB, which is a class of technology that aims to extend existing enterprise security policy and access control to cloud applications that an enterprise might be using.
In a 2015 interview with eWEEK, Palerra CEO and founder Rohit Gupta explained that his company’s platform also helps enterprises understand cloud security risks.
“We offer a simple software-as-a-service platform, and we give clients the ability to model threats and discover breaches and issues in their cloud applications,” Gupta said.
In a letter to customers, Peter Barker, senior vice president of Identity Management and Security Products at Oracle, wrote that the acquisition of Palerra will help accelerate cloud adoption securely by providing comprehensive identity and security cloud services.
“The combination of Oracle Identity Cloud Service (IDaaS) and Palerra’s CASB solution plan to deliver comprehensive protection for users, applications and APIs, data, and infrastructure to secure customer adoption of cloud,” Barker stated.
The CASB market has been an active one in the last year, with multiple acquisitions as large vendors aim to enhance their cloud security offerings. Microsoft is among the active participants in the CASB market, following its September 2015 acquisition of CASB vendor Adallom for $320 million.
In November 2015, Blue Coat acquired CASB vendor Elastica, while Blue Coat itself was acquired by Symantec in a $4.65 billion deal announced in June 2016. Also in June, Cisco acquired CASB vendor CloudLock for $293 million, further consolidating the marketplace.
“Modern enterprises expect to get better visibility, achieve rapid value, and deliver peace of mind to their end-users who access their cloud applications, while making it a seamless and secure user experience,” Palerra’s Gupta wrote in a blog post. “Palerra has been a pioneer in this new generation of CASB, with a focus on protecting both information and infrastructure in the Cloud.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.