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It was announced last week that consulting giant Accenture would acquire a majority stake in industrial cybersecurity provider Dragos. From the press release:
"Building on its $10 billion cybersecurity business, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) is expanding its position with the acquisition of a majority stake in Dragos and all of runZero and NetRise to deliver end-to-end operational technology (OT) security for the critical infrastructure and industrial operations underpinning power grids, pipelines, manufacturing, distribution facilities, and data centers. The Dragos Platform will expand to cover the extended environment that controls physical processes, while Accenture's deep OT security expertise, unique industrial datasets and decades of trusted relationships with critical infrastructure operators will address a need previously unaddressed at scale."
As you can see, this is not just an acquisition of a majority stake in Dragos; it is also an acquisition of cybersecurity providers runZero and NetRise. All of this was done, as Accenture says to transform the company into an end-to-end OT cybersecurity provider. Dragos is a good investment; it's one of the older OT-specific cybersecurity firms, formed a decade ago by OT cybersecurity industry luminary Rob Lee. Dragos has always been well known for its people expertise and features a cadre of elite OT threat hunters and experts.
As the press release says, the idea is to combine Dragos' capabilities with NetRise and runZero to create an end-to-end solution. Also from the press release:
"Dragos' industry-leading OT threat detection, trusted vendor-neutral platform and proprietary dataset will be enhanced through the acquisitions of runZero and NetRise. The addition of runZero will bring comprehensive exposure assessment and attack-surface intelligence. NetRise will add a unique software supply chain dataset and firmware-level visibility into device exposure. Combining Dragos with runZero and NetRise will deliver a unified solution that enhances visibility, accelerates threat detection and response, and strengthens Dragos’ ability to scale adoption of its broadened platform. Industrial and critical infrastructure operators will have one place to see everything on their OT network, understand what’s running on it and help stop what’s attacking it."
It's actually a sensible idea, though merging the three companies into a single solution will be a challenge. I honestly don't know much about the corporate cultures of NetRise and runZero, but Dragos' real strength is its people -- highly experienced experts dedicated to critical infrastructure protection who view it as a real mission. It's not just a platform, although the platform does have a considerable installed base in the manufacturing and process industries, as well as the power industry, obviously.
The Accenture investments also represent continued momentum in the world of OT cybersecurity market consolidation. This comes on the heels of the recent acquisition of Nozomi by Mitsubishi Electric and the acquisition of Armis by ServiceNow. I am sure we can expect the consolidation to continue.