Qualys Snags Layered Insight In Container Security Play

Cloud security specialist Qualys said Tuesday it had purchased Layered Insight to up its container protection capabilities.

Qualys, the Foster City, Calif.-based security software vendor, said Layered Insight's technology will bulk up the Container Security application that's part of Qualys Cloud Platform.

Layered Insight, based in Pleasanton, Calif., delivers deeper visibility into applications running inside containers, allows users to set policies, automate enforcement, and detects breaches during runtime. Those capabilities extend to serverless container environments: Amazon Fargate and Microsoft Azure Container Instances.

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"The integrated solution will automatically correlate deep runtime behavioral analysis with Qualys' leading threat protection capabilities to deliver DevOps teams unmatched runtime application protection without added container management complexity," Qualys said in a statement.

The total value of the deal for Layered Insight is $12 million with another $4 million in the form of an earn-out and another $4 million tied to the employment of key employees through 2019, according to the company.

The integration of the two security platforms is expected by the second half of 2019, Qualys said.

Qualys has been expanding its capabilities of late through acquisitions.

In August of 2017, it acquired network analysis technology from Nevis Networks. Then in December it bought threat detection startup NetWatcher, looking to strengthen its hand with MSP customers.

Last April, Qualys took a dive into mobile and IoT Security by buying 1Mobility. And in June the company

signed a letter of intent to purchase Second Front Systems, a channel partner with a military, national security and federal government practice.

Layered Insight co-founders Asif Awan and John Kinsella will join Qualys as CTO of Container Security and vice president engineering, Container Security, respectively.