Sophos

UK-based Sophos is a cybersecurity company founded in 1985 as a provider of antivirus and encryption products. The company has expanded into B2B and B2C solutions and its B2B offerings include endpoint detection and response (EDR) which leverages AI and behavioral analysis to detect and respond to threats across endpoint devices. The company also helps enterprises to detect and respond to threats in their cloud environments such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. As of March 2021, Sophos served more than 400,000 customers in more than 150 countries.

Sophos has made several acquisitions over the last decade to strengthen its own offerings. Notable acquisitions include the machine learning-based endpoint security provider Invincea in February 2017 for USD 120 million, and AI cloud security startup Avid Secure in January 2019. In June 2019, Sophos acquired Rook Security, a managed detection and response (MDR) startup which has a team providing 24/7 monitoring, and Darkbytes—another MDR startup—which served as the cornerstone for the launch of Sophos’ own managed services arm that year. In June 2021, the company acquired Braintrace, a network detection and response (NDR) startup, to support its managed threat response (MTR) teams. In July 2021, Sophos acquired Capsule8 to integrate its Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem (ACE) into the Capsule8 platform in order to expand its portfolio beyond Windows security by providing improved protection for Linux systems. During the same year in August, Sophos acquired the development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) company Refactr, to add security orchestration and automation response (SOAR) capabilities to its MTR, XDR, and ACE solutions. Sophos intends to roll out its SOAR solutions by early 2022. In April 2022, Sophos acquired SOC.OS, a spinout of the UK-based defense, aerospace, and security company BAE Systems. SOC.OS filters out the noise to find key signals that help consolidate and prioritize high volumes of security alerts across the IT infrastructure of an organization. The acquisition advanced Sophos’ MTR and XDR capabilities, and expanded its ACE by providing alerts and events with third-party telemetry from endpoint, server, firewall, identity and access management (IAM), cloud workload, email, and mobile security products.

Sophos operates cybersecurity data centers in the US, Canada, Germany, and Ireland to facilitate the expansion of its Sophos Central platform that supports its XDR, endpoint, server, encryption, Cloud Optix, and MDR solutions. The company plans to add two new data centers in Australia and Japan in 2021.

In 2019, the private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquired Sophos for USD 3.9 billion.