Okta to Acquire Spera Security – Source: www.govinfosecurity.com

Access Management

Okta Says Acquisition Will Expand Its Ability to Detect High-Risk Accounts

David Perera (@daveperera) •
December 19, 2023    

Identity provider giant Okta finalized an agreement to acquire Spera Security, saying the purchase will expand its ability to track risky accounts and access misconfigurations.

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The publicly traded San Francisco company did not disclose terms of the acquisition. Calcalist reported the deal is worth between $100 million and $130 million. Okta has a market cap of approximately $14 billion. Trading was up nearly 3% since the Tuesday market open.

Spera, a Tel Aviv startup, touts itself as a tool for giving security teams “real-time visibility into their entire identity surface.” Administrators can use it to identify accounts excluded from multifactor authentication or single-sign on. Its capabilities work in a central identity provider and also in software-as-a-service applications and third-party cloud infrastructure, Okta says.

“Together with Okta, I’m confident we can transform the cybersecurity landscape and fulfill our mission to prevent identity-driven breaches,” wrote co-founder Dor Fledel on LinkedIn. Most breaches have an identity component, the Okta release states, citing a finding from the most recent annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report that says 86% of breaches stem from phishing attacks and other forms of credential abuse.

Founded by Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch, Spera received $10 million in seed funding in March. The funding was led by YL Ventures and included participation from Google, Palo Alto Networks and Akamai.

“Spera Security did an excellent job addressing a significant gap when it comes to protection against #identity-based #cyberattacks, in a field that has become one of the most sought-after sectors in #cybersecurity,” wrote Yoav Leitersdorf, YL Ventures’ managing partner, on LinkedIn.

The acquisition comes just months after Okta purchased password manager Uno (see: Okta Buys Personal Password Manager Uno to Service Consumers).

The company announced a 90-day pause on product development and internal projects in late November in an effort to beef up security architecture and operations for applications, hardware and third-party vendors. The move came after it had disclosed that the attacker behind a September data breach stole details pertaining to all users of its primary customer support system, including a list of customer support system usernames and contact details (see: Okta Delays New Products, Projects 90 Days to Boost Security).