Organizations today are faced with defending a complex technology landscape — with cyberattacks targeted at constantly changing cloud, distributed, and on-premises environments. Often escaping security scans and periodic assessments, these changes represent windows of opportunities for attackers looking to bypass defenses.

While there always have — and always will be — unknown risks, having a continuous process to automatically discover unknowns, prioritize them, and feed those back into teams is becoming an essential component of a modern cybersecurity program. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce IBM’s intent to acquire Randori, a leading attack surface management and offensive cybersecurity provider, to help clients take control of this situation with an attacker’s perspective of their most risky gaps.

IBM Security has made key bets around the need for both best-in-class defensive and offensive security, most recently with the acquisition of ReaQta to help automatically detect and block threats at the endpoint, as well as the launch of QRadar XDR and MDR services powered by our elite team of X-Force experts. Today, IBM Security is making a further bet that cybersecurity must go on the offensive to protect the cloud, with security capabilities to help clients of all sizes better see what attackers see, before the damage is done.

It takes an attacker to know your attack surface

Investigations into recent breaches have shown that despite increased investment, companies continue to struggle with managing their attack surface, meaning all the possible points where an unauthorized user can access a system and extract data. According to ESG, 69% of those asked had a compromise via an unknown, unmanaged, or poorly managed external-facing asset in the past year. That’s where Randori steps in.

Randori is a hacker-led company and pioneer in attack surface management, founded with the mission to ensure every organization has access to the attacker’s perspective. They do this with an offensive security platform that replicates the techniques attackers use to discover and attack organizations at scale. Customers use this platform to stay one step ahead by understanding their most risky exposures, validating controls, and optimizing their defenses in real-time.

Key to Randori is the idea of continuous improvement. Named after a jiu-jitsu term that means “practice how you fight,” the Randori team built a platform to get better with every new target they discover and each new attack runbook they develop. True to their namesake, they learn and adapt with customers. Through this, they help customers adopt a more proactive security posture by helping them discover unknown exposures, better prioritize vulnerabilities, and validate their defenses in real-time so they can stay ahead of the next attack.

The best defense is a good offense

IBM has long been a leader in delivering enterprise security products and services, operating one of the world’s broadest security research, development, and delivery organizations that monitors more than 150 billion security events per day in more than 130 countries. By combining the strengths of the two companies, we plan to help organizations better identify risks, test defenses, detect threats, and respond to incidents at scale.

Upon close of the acquisition, we plan to integrate Randori’s attack surface management software with the extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities of IBM Security QRadar XDR. By feeding insights from Randori into QRadar XDR, security teams will be able to leverage real-time attack surface visibility for intelligent alert triage, threat hunting, and incident response. This can help eliminate the need for customers to manually monitor new critical applications and respond quickly when new issues or emerging threats arise on their perimeter.

Randori also provides businesses with a solution that uniquely combines attack surface management with continuous automated testing to stress test defenses and incident response teams. Upon close, we will leverage Randori to compliment X-Force Red’s elite hacker-led offensive security services while further enriching QRadar XDR detection and response capabilities. This will allow more global customers to benefit from a top-tier attack experience that helps uncover where organizations are most vulnerable. Randori insights will also be leveraged by IBM’s Managed Security Services to help improve threat detection for thousands of clients.

Learn more

Randori has built a solid customer base and dream team of passionate, offensive-minded employees. We’re looking forward to the next chapter of our journey together, delivering the attacker’s perspective to organizations worldwide. To learn more about this exciting announcement, check out the press release. For more information about Randori and its Attack Surface Management platform, check out their website.