Rapid7 Acquires Security Orchestration and Automation Firm Komand

Boston-based IT security and operations software maker Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) on Tuesday announced that it has acquired security orchestration and automation firm Komand.

Founded in late 2015 by Jen Andre, who previously co-founded Threat Stack, Komand’s platform was designed to help security and IT teams automate repetitive tasks, which Rapid7 says will “help its customers reduce time to resolution, maximize resources, and overcome ecosystem complexity.”

Specifically, Rapid7 explained that Komand’s technology will expand Rapid7’s Insight platform’s ability to “empower lean security and IT teams to meaningfully increase productivity across their entire operation and reduce the time it takes to respond to an incident.”

Customers will now have the ability to automatically identify risks, respond to incidents, and address issues significantly faster and with less human intervention, Rapid7 says.

“The need for well-designed security and IT automation solutions is acute; resources are scarce, environments are becoming more complex, all while threats are increasing,” said Corey Thomas, president and CEO of Rapid7. “Security and IT solutions must evolve through context-driven automation, allowing cybersecurity and IT professionals to focus on more strategic activities.”

“We’ve been impressed by the technology developed by the Komand team and believe that together, we’ll be able to build solutions that make security and IT teams significantly more productive,” said Lee Weiner, chief product officer at Rapid7. “The complexity of today’s security and IT ecosystems have put security and IT operations teams at a significant disadvantage when they need to respond quickly. By developing contextualized automation technology, we’ll be able to cut back the time it takes to respond to an incident—when minutes can mean the difference between a minor issue and significant compromise or loss.”

Rapid7 cites use cases including automated risk remediation and patching, malware investigation and containment, and chat ops for responding to routine inquiries. 

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, though Rapid7 said the purchase is not expected to have a material financial impact to its calculated billings, revenue, and non-GAAP earnings (loss) per share for calendar year 2017, as guided on May 9, 2017. 

Both Rapid7 and Komand were Boston-based companies with offices just down the street from each other.

As part of the acquisition, 12 Komand employees have become employees of Rapid7.

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For more than 10 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the treat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences.
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Original author: Mike Lennon