Fortinet Acquires OPAQ Networks
American multinational corporation Fortinet today announced the acquisition of OPAQ Networks. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
OPAQ is a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cloud provider based in Herndon, Virginia. The company is known for its Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) cloud solution, designed to protect all kinds of distributed networks, including data centers, branch offices, remote users, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Since being founded in 2017, OPAQ has opened office in 8 states across America and now employs around 50 people. Prior to its own acquisition, the company acquired Bat Blue Networks and Drawbridge Networks in 2017 and FourV Systems in 2018.
With Fortinet’s acquisition of the company now complete, OPAQ’s patented ZTNA solution has been combined with Fortinet’s existing SASE offering in a bid to form the best-in-class SASE cloud security platform.
According to Fortinet, this new platform will boast the industry’s only true zero trust access and security by providing industry-leading next-generation firewall and SD-WAN capabilities, web security, sandboxing, advanced endpoint, identity/multi-factor authentication, multi-cloud workload protection, cloud application security broker (CASB), browser isolation, and web application firewalling capabilities.
Fortinet is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company was founded in 2000 by brothers Ken and Michael Xie.
Commenting on the acquisition, CEO and Chairman of the Board Ken Xie said: “The recent SASE market momentum further validates our Security-driven Networking approach and underscores what we’ve been saying for years. In this era of hyperconnectivity and expanding networks; with the network edge stretching across the entire digital infrastructure, networking and security must converge.”
Xie said acquiring OPAQ would help Fortinet’s SASE platform become the most comprehensive one in existence.
“The Fortinet SASE platform delivers the broadest security and industry-leading SD-WAN and networking offerings that can all be delivered to customers and partners through a flexible, cost efficient and patented zero-trust cloud architecture,” said Ken.
“The acquisition of OPAQ actually further enhances our existing SASE offering enabling Fortinet to deliver the most complete SASE platform on the market.”
In 2018, Fortinet purchased threat analytics company ZoneFox for $18m and IoT-focused security firm Bradford Networks for $17m.
This post Fortinet Acquires OPAQ Networks originally appeared on InfoSecurity Magazine.
