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Sophos, a global provider of cybersecurity solutions, has acquired Refactr. As a startup based in Bellevue, Washington and founded in 2017 by U.S. Air Force veteran and industry experts in cloud and cybersecurity, Refactr develops and markets a DevSecOps automation platform that bridges the gap between DevOps and cybersecurity.
As DevOps and security teams continue to adopt ‘IT-as-Code’ approaches to managing their environments, Refactr’s ability to automate any of these processes would enable teams to scale. With Refactr’s platform, DevOps teams for example can augment existing continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows. Cybersecurity teams can also leverage the platform’s visual drag and drop builder.
Refactr serves clients in both the private and government/public sectors, including the Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air Force’s Platform One, to name some. Financial terms of the Refactr acquisition by Sophos were not disclosed.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response
Sophos is optimizing Refactr’s DevSecOps automation platform to add Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to its Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions. The SOAR capabilities would also help automate Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all of Sophos’ product solutions, services, threat intelligence, and data lake.
“First-generation SOAR solutions have moved our industry forward in significant ways, but we’re now witnessing an evolution where more and more businesses are becoming software companies, and our security solutions need to evolve in parallel. As we’ve seen in recent supply-chain incidents, attackers are increasingly targeting software development pipelines, and defenders need the ability to shift further left of attackers,” said Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos. “The industry needs SOAR to mature into more capable and generalizable DevSecOps solutions, and Sophos’ acquisition of Refactr will help us lead the way. With Refactr, Sophos will fast track the integration of such advanced SOAR capabilities into our Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, the basis for our XDR product and MTR service. We will provide a full spectrum of automated playbooks for our customers and partners, from drag-and-drop to fully programmable, along with broad integrations with third-party solutions through our technology alliances program to work with today’s diverse IT environments.”
Refactr’s entire team of team of developers and engineers have joined Sophos. In addition to the continued offering of the Refactr platform, Sophos plans to begin offering SOAR options by early 2022
DevSecOps Solutions
Sophos plans to continue to develop and offer Refactr’s platform to their existing and growing base of partners and organizations that want to build customized IT and security automations for themselves and for their clients. Refactr’s Community Edition will continue to be available as well.
“We created the Refactr platform so that every organization can deliver effective DevSecOps through holistic security-first automation. Our platform was purpose-built to be versatile, interoperable and easy to use. Cybersecurity teams can now collaborate with DevOps to easily build complicated IT automation and security integrations through DevSecOps pipelines,” said Michael Fraser, CEO and co-founder of Refactr. “Our mission is to enable DevSecOps to become the modern approach to automation, where cybersecurity use cases like SOAR, XDR, compliance, cloud security, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) become building blocks for DevSecOps solutions. We are already seeing success in providing organizations our emerging technology, including the Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air Force. We are proud of what we accomplished at Refactr, and excited for the next part of our journey with Sophos to help create a more secure world through DevSecOps.”
