San Francisco-based security and performance services vendor Cloudflare has agreed to purchase Area 1 Security to stop corporate phishing attacks by preemptively discovering and eliminating them before they can inflict damage.
Cloudflare, which entered the email security market last year with tools to manage incoming email routing and prevent email spoofing and phishing on outgoing emails, acquired Area 1 Security for approximately $162 million.
Area 1 Security has a cloud-native platform built alongside email programs to stop phishing attacks. Cloudflare said 40-50 percent of the $162 million price tag is payares of Cloudflare’s Class A commo sharesn stock. The acquisition will close in Q2.
“Email is the largest cyber-attack vector on the Internet, which makes integrated email security-critical to any true Zero Trust network. That’s why today we’re welcoming Area 1 Security to help make Cloudflare’s platform the clear leader in Zero Trust,” said Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare.
“To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organization’s applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email. Together, we expect we’ll be delivering the fastest, most effective, and most reliable email security on the market,” added Matthew Prince.
Area 1 Security was founded in 2013. It has raised $82.5 million in five rounds of outside funding, according to Crunchbase. In June 2020 brought on longtime SonicWall marketing and product management leader Patrick Sweeney as CEO, and he two months later recruited former SonicWall Chief Revenue Officer Steve Pataky to take the same role at Area 1.
Area 1 Security CEO Patrick Sweeney said that combining their phishing protection and threat intelligence capabilities with Cloudflare’s global network, data capabilities, and Zero Trust platform,
“Today, email is a business’ most-used cloud application. It’s unfortunately unprotected. We estimate that more than 90 percent of cyber security damages are the result of just one thing: phishing,” Sweeney said.
Cloudflare has implemented Area 1 to protect its employees in early 2020. The results have been fantastic, with a significant and prolonged drop in phishing emails, Cloudflare Chief Technology Officer John Graham-Cumming wrote in a blog post. Specifically, he said Area 1 has allowed Cloudflare to proactively identify phishing campaigns and take action against them before they cause damage.
