Kaspersky acquires Brain4Net to boost its XDR platform with orchestrated SASE

Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity company and leader in endpoint protection, has acquired emerging company, Brain4Net. The organization has been developing solutions and services to help enterprises and service providers adapt modern technologies, such as Software-Defined Wide-Area Network (SD-WAN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), with existing network infrastructure. Brain4Net’s team is joining the company and will contribute to building Kaspersky’s compelling network security strategy, as well as a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and evolved XDR offering.

03 November 2021

According to IDC, worldwide ‘whole cloud’ spending is forecast to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025. In this context, accelerated by the pandemic and its impact on remote workforces, it becomes difficult for organizations to manage and protect their distributed infrastructures from advanced threats. SD-WAN enables teams to overcome this challenge by providing efficient management and simplifying the use of security functions for protection of the entire infrastructure.

Moving forward with a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offering

A remote workforce combined with large volumes of data and traffic moving between public cloud services and branch offices and data centers, dictate the need for immediate, stable, and secure access for users regardless of their location. This has informed a new network security concept, dubbed by Gartner as Secure Access Service Edge or SASE, which brings security and connectivity together as required.

By acquiring Brain4Net, Kaspersky aims to bring a completely new SASE offering to the market as a unified platform which will combine Kaspersky’s best-in-class security solutions and technologies with Brain4Net’s network orchestration and control capabilities and expertise. Due to this strategic move, Kaspersky will be able to offer its enterprise customers both security and connectivity services.

In particular, Kaspersky’s future SASE offering will eventually include a cloud access security broker (CASB), cloud secure web gateway (SWG), cloud workload protection platform (CWPP), cloud security posture management (CSPM), zero trust network access (ZTNA), and other services.

Evolution of advanced Kaspersky XDR

Existing security solutions may not deliver a holistic approach to detecting and remediating advanced threats. Integrations of third-party network controls into Extended Detection and Response (XDR) class solutions from endpoint security vendors alone do not provide enough visibility and investigation capabilities over incidents happening inside enterprise environments.

This acquisition will also allow Kaspersky to evolve its existing solutions into full-scale Extended Detection and Response (XDR). SASE brings obvious benefits for XDR, including the ability to collect telemetry from network traffic, stop an attack anywhere across the edge and the network, and simplify orchestration and management due to a single point of control through SASE.

The new XDR offering based on a cloud-native EDR solution will provide visibility and advanced functionality for Al-based detection and auto response logic across all endpoints and the network. In particular, Kaspersky XDR will bring a wide range of automated incident response scenarios (from blocking a file execution on an endpoint to blocking certain network segments or internal infrastructure for certain users or types of users) along with network segmentation tools.

Furthermore, Kaspersky XDR will be based on unified server architecture and will provide centralized management from a single web console. Customers will be able to control and reliably protect all popular entry points for potential threats: network, web traffic, email, workstations, servers, and virtual machines. Working together, the XDR platform with SASE will allow enterprises to implement a zero-trust strategy. In addition to built-in advanced technology detection and analysis, the platform will benefit from world-leading threat intelligence (TI) which is constantly updated and validated by leading Kaspersky experts.

One ecosystem for corporate security

All these components will become an integral part of the single ecosystem which is Kaspersky’s vision for the future of corporate cybersecurity. The central element of this ecosystem is Kaspersky Open Single Management Platform. It will become a single cloud-native technological platform to build Kaspersky XDR and will use deployment model agnostic architecture. This way, the platform could be used across the public cloud, private cloud or even on-premises. 

“We are excited to join forces with Brain4Net’s talented team who have already built mature world-class technologies and services for network orchestration and control. I’m confident that their knowledge and experience, combined with Kaspersky’s most awarded security technologies and recognized threat expertise will blend perfectly with our vision for corporate security, while new offerings will help security officers speed up threat detection, investigation and remediation, reducing mean time to response,” says Andrey Efremov, Chief Business Development Officer at Kaspersky.

Max Kaminskiy, CEO and co-founder at Brain4Net, adds: “We are delighted to join the Kaspersky team. The spread of SD-WAN technology needs a strong business scenario, that is why we are partnering with Kaspersky XDR. Brain4Net’s choice of technologies confirms the high level of the company’s products and competencies. Together we will continue to make the world a safer and more comfortable place.”