Okta, an identity and access management business, is purchasing Spera, a security startup.
The Spera acquisition is expected to close during the fiscal first quarter, beginning in early February, and will build on Okta’s existing identity threat detection and response (ITDR) capabilities while providing customers with technology to “elevate their identity security, posture management, and identify, detect, and remediate risks.”
The deal’s specifics were not published, but Calcalist says that Okta is paying between $100 million and $130 million for Spera, depending on milestones.
“As the leading identity partner, we remain committed to equipping our customers with the tools and knowledge needed in an increasingly challenging environment, and we’re excited about how Spera Security can amplify our ITDR work to deliver more secure outcomes for our customers,” a blog post that was published this morning reads.
Entrepreneurs Dor Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch founded Spera, as my colleague Frederic previously reported, a few years ago. The Palo Alto and Tel Aviv-based platform delivers tools for identifying silos across software-as-a-service and infrastructure applications, assisting in the discovery of vulnerabilities across user populations, and prioritizing security concerns based on legislation, attack vectors, and industry best practices.
As Frederic mentioned in his report, a service like Spera also serves a function other than security: it helps businesses save licensing costs by locating inactive accounts that may be shut off.
Prior to the Okta transaction, Spera, which employs roughly 25 workers, had received $10 million. YL Ventures and angel investors from Google, Palo Alto Networks, Akamai, and Zendesk were among the investors.
Spera, according to Okta, will help its clients better examine the security posture of their identity infrastructure, as well as their applications and services, while also bringing new customers to the Okta platform. According to Gartner data, 90% of enterprises will use some form of integrated ITDR strategy by 2026, up from between 5% and 20% currently.
“With Spera Security, we will equip our customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management and quickly identify, detect, and remediate risks,” according to the blog post. “They can use Spera Security’s tangible suggestions, like identifying SSO [single sign-on] or MFA [multifactor authentication] exclusions for privileged and service accounts, to improve their security posture and remediate any potential threat vectors before they become critical.”
Okta’s purchase of Spera follows the former’s acquisition of a 16z-backed password manager, Uno, and follows a profitable fiscal quarter for Okta. The $6 billion corporation outperformed Wall Street estimates in the fourth quarter, indicating that the publicly listed company is on the right road—at least in the eyes of shareholders.
