CrowdStrike to Buy SecureCircle, Taking Zero Trust Protection Down to the Data

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc., the cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection company, has agreed to buy SecureCircle, a SaaS cybersecurity service that applies Zero Trust security to data held on endpoints. The deal will add data to the Zero Trust capabilities CrowdStrike already offers for endpoint devices and identities, which it describes as industry-leading. The transaction is all cash and is expected to complete in CrowdStrike's fiscal fourth quarter, subject to the usual closing conditions.

CrowdStrike says it has reshaped security for the cloud era by protecting the endpoint, which it calls the epicentre of enterprise risk. SecureCircle's technology is intended to modernise data protection and let customers apply Zero Trust at three levels: the device, the identity and the data. Data protection is a complicated problem that troubles every organisation, and CrowdStrike's plan is to answer it simply, with Zero Trust controls at several levels delivered through its lightweight Falcon agent on the endpoint.

Why the company says DLP has failed

The market for data loss prevention (DLP) and related technologies is estimated at around $3 billion in 2021. Yet despite billions of dollars spent on legacy DLP tools, organisations keep suffering data breaches at a worrying pace, whether through accidental leaks, ransomware, sophisticated attacks or other causes. CrowdStrike calls DLP a failed technology and argues that customers need a way to protect data that does not get in users' way.

Its answer, built on SecureCircle's technology, is to enforce encryption on data in all three of its states: in transit, at rest and in use. That would let customers protect data sitting on the endpoint as well as data leaving it or arriving at it. Paired with CrowdStrike Zero Trust Assessment, customers would also be able to set data access and usage policies for each user according to that user's Zero Trust score, so that risk is reduced dynamically.

What the two chief executives said

George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's co-founder and chief executive, said data loss prevention has lacked innovation and that legacy tools have entirely failed to deliver on their promise of stopping breaches. Meanwhile, he said, the endpoint has become the centre of how data is accessed, used, shared and stored. Kurtz said CrowdStrike would set "a new standard for endpoint-based data protection" by tying Zero Trust enforcement to the device, the user's identity and, through this acquisition, the data being accessed and used.

Jeff Capone, chief executive of SecureCircle, said his team was excited to become part of CrowdStrike and to combine SecureCircle's data protection products with the leading provider of cloud-delivered endpoint protection. In today's enterprise, he said, the endpoint is everything. Bringing SecureCircle's cloud-native way of protecting sensitive data together with CrowdStrike's Zero Trust endpoint security would, in his view, let customers enforce Zero Trust on the endpoint at every level.

About SecureCircle's approach

Jeff Capone and Artem Tsai founded SecureCircle in 2016. The company holds that data security without friction creates business value for customers: end users work without hindrance while their data stays protected at all times against breaches and insider threats, ransomware exfiltration among them. Rather than depending on complicated reactive measures, SecureCircle keeps data secured persistently while it is in transit, at rest and even in use.