Palo Alto Networks has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Israel-based Secdo, specialising in endpoint detection and response security solutions.

The Secdo capabilities will be used to improve the Palo Alto Traps solution, which claims to be able to disrupt an attack before it can infect an endpoint. Palo Alto has said the Secdo team will bring unique data collection and visualization capabilities to improve a company’s ability to distinguish malicious activity from normal.

“We believe security operations teams need the most advanced and consistent approach to endpoint security,” said Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto. “With Secdo’s EDR capabilities as part of our platform, we will accelerate our ability to detect and prevent successful cyberattacks across the cloud, endpoint, and network”

If you think security is going to be a problem now, just wait a couple of years and you’ll see how compounded the issue is becoming.

Networks are becoming increasingly complex, as is the access to them. The basic principles of security are continuing to be ignored, therefore building more complexity on top of a compromised mess is only going to end badly. This is the problem with working in the world of security; it’s a thankless task. Either you are slowing down progress at an organization by making sure solutions are water-tight, or you are the one to blame when there is a breach further down the line. Who would want to work in such a space which is undervalued one day and a scapegoat the next.

This acquisition from Palo Alto could be aiming to address a potentially significant problem; the number of entry points to a network. An end-point is defined as a device which provides an entry point for threats, such as a smartphone or tablet. The last few years have seen the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and enterprise mobility trends open up the network to countless more threats, but with the IoT world just around the corner, the hazards will grow exponentially; every device which accesses your network is an opportunity for nefarious means.

The perimeter which security engineers are supposed to be protecting is constantly changing, with new gateways opening up every time someone accesses their email while on the move or connected to somebody else’s wifi. The ability to identify and automate responses on the edge would be a welcome relief to the overworked and underappreciated security engineers. This might prove to be a very useful acquisition for Palo Alto.