Israeli IT security giant Check Point Software Technologies (Nasdaq: CHKP) has announced that it has acquired Israeli cybersecurity startup Spectral. Sources close to the deal have told Globes that Check Point will pay about $60 million for Spectral, which was founded in 2020, and has raised $6.2 million from the Amiti and Mizmaa funds.
Spectral was founded by CEO Dotan Nahum, COO Idan Didi, VP engineering Lior Reuven and chief architect Uri Shamay. According to LinkedIn, the company has 30 employees who have been informed about the acquisition.
Spectral is part of the growing "shift left" trend, in which responsibility for checking security is moving towards ever-earlier stages in the software development cycle. Consequently, responsibility for identifying security failures also involves developers and DevOps teams and not only the traditional information security employees who identify problems only when applications are running in real-time. The best-known Israeli startup in this field is Snyk, which raised funds in September at a company valuation of $8.5 billion.
Spectral is developing a scanner that identifies errors in code development and security problems in other assets that lead to breaches. Spectral presents these problems on a custom-designed dashboard. Spectral's solution will be added to Check Point's Clouguard cloud security platform, which has been built through a range of acquisitions of startups made by the company in recent years.
Check Point is led by cofounder and CEO Gil Shwed.
Check Point CPO Dr. Dorit Dor said, "As leaders in IT security Check Point is constantly looking at how cloud security will morph in the future so we can invest today in securing whatever comes next. The acquisition of Spectral, further emphasizes our commitment to cloud developers. This is Check Point's fifth cloud security acquisition in the last three years, reaffirming our commitment to support the cloud developer's community and our mission of delivering cloud security automation, usability, and trust across any cloud to every enterprise."
Spectral CEO Dotan Nahum added, "Spectral's undertaking is to enable developers to build and ship software without worry. By joining Check Point, we will be able to help more developers, across more regions, and build our community and open source offering faster and more effectively. The combination of Check Point's deep cloud security capabilities and threat intelligence tools with Spectral's best in class security tools for developers, will allow organizations to shift-left security with tools developers love and security teams trust."