Okta snatches up security firm Spera, reportedly for over $100M

Okta, the identity and access management company, is acquiring security firm Spera for approximately $100 million to $130 million. The deal is expected to close during the fiscal first quarter beginning in early February. Okta says the acquisition will build on its existing identity threat detection and response (ITDR) capabilities, while equipping customers with tech to “elevate their identity security, posture management and identify, detect and remediate risks.”
Spera was co-founded several years ago by entrepreneurs Dor Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch. The Palo Alto- and Tel Aviv-based platform provides tools to identify silos across software-as-a-service and infrastructure apps, helping to discover vulnerabilities across user populations and prioritize security issues based on regulations, attack vectors and industry best practices.
Okta sees Spera enabling its customers to better assess the security posture of their identity infrastructure as well as their apps and services — and attracting new customers to the Okta platform. The company cites research from Gartner implying that, by 2026, 90% of organizations will be using some type of embedded ITDR strategy — up from between 5% to 20% today.
“With Spera, we’ll equip our customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management and quickly identify, detect and remediate risks,” the blog post continues. “ They can use Spera’s tangible suggestions like identifying single sign-on or multi-factor authentication exclusions for privileged and service accounts to improve their security posture and remediate any potential threat vectors before they become critical.”

Link to the original story: https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/19/okta-snatches-up-security-firm-spera-reportedly-for-over-100m/