Sophos soaks up SOC.OS

Cyber security firm Sophos has bought cloud-based security alert investigation and triage automation specialist SOC.OS, as it looks to build out its own proposition around managed threat response (MTR) and extended detection and response (XDR), as well as expand its Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem – which underpins its entire set of offerings.

A two-year-old spinout from BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, Milton Keynes-based SOC.OS counts among its customers Sunderland-based housing association Gentoo, London’s Natural History Museum and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The SOC.OS offering “consolidates and prioritises high volumes of security alerts from multiple products and platforms” from across the user’s IT estate, which, it says, enables security operations teams to quickly understand and respond to the issues that actually matter.

“Alert fatigue and lack of visibility still plague security teams worldwide,” said Dave Mareels, chief executive officer and co-founder of SOC.OS. “Considering this, against the backdrop of constantly changing cyber threats and a challenging talent landscape, defenders need new and innovative products and services that can help them solve more complex incidents in less time.

“For many defenders, however, the complexity and cost of traditional security solutions act as barriers to adoption. By joining forces with Sophos, we can address these challenges together, head on.

“The sum is greater than our parts, and by combining our capabilities, we’re positioned to offer truly unique, cost-effective and highly accessible products and services to those who need it most, on a global scale,” he said.

Sophos said that with the cyber attack landscape becoming so complex, security teams were feeling pressurised to monitor every aspect of their organisation’s security, and that between the 24/7 nature of the beast, high volumes of alerts and false positives, and understaffing, XDR or MTR, as well as automation to cluster and triage alerts, will become a must-have.

Citing a recent Gartner market guide on the subject, published in November 2021, Sophos added that to make XDR a viable long-term investment, buyers needed to evaluate the breadth and depth of ecosystem integration, so the easier it is to integrate XDR into an existing environment, the better investment it becomes.

“Sophos MTR is one of the fastest-growing new offerings in the company’s history,” said Sophos chief technology and product officer Joe Levy. “We now stand as one of the largest managed detection and response operations in the world, delivering superior security outcomes through an MTR service with more than 8,000 customers.

“The top enhancement request from these customers is ‘better integrations with existing security environments’, and with the innovative technology from SOC.OS, we will be able to do just that – seamlessly integrate Sophos’ MTR and XDR solutions within their current set of security and IT solutions.

“SOC.OS will also provide our Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem with a broader set of third-party telemetry, so security analysts have better visibility into important events and alerts,” he said.

“SOC.OS has an impressive list of integrations that will benefit Sophos customers as we continue to expand and develop industry-leading XDR and MDR capabilities. We’re very excited to bring the team and technology from SOC.OS onboard.”