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Cybersprint CEO and founder, Pieter Jansen | Image credit: Cybersprint

UK-based Darktrace, a cybersecurity AI company that identifies, prevents and eliminates insider threats, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Netherlands-based cybersecurity company, Cybersprint. The Dutch startup is an attack surface management company that provides continuous, real-time insights from an outside-in perspective to eliminate blind spots and detect risks.

According to a statement from Darktrace, it has acquired Cybersprint for €47.5M, 75 per cent of which is in cash and 25 per cent in an equity deal. This valued the deal at approx 12.5 times Cybersprint’s annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

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The acquisition is expected to be completed on or around 1st March, 2022.

Improving digital security around the globe

Founded in 2015 by Pieter Jansen, Cybersprint maps the attack surface of organisations and brands. It offers visibility using continuous and automated digital asset discovery. The company’s zero-scope AI-driven approach provides an outside-in perspective, eliminating blind spots.

The company says these insights empower cybersecurity professionals to prioritise the mitigation of vulnerabilities and detect and prevent threats such as data leaks, ransomware compromise and more.

Cybersprint’s Attack Surface Management (ASM) platform allows organisations to automate, manage, and monitor risks with customisable filters and alerts, integrated into existing processes. 

Speaking on the development, Pieter Jansen says, “We are passionate about automating manual tasks in cybersecurity from an outside perspective. We believe attackers never sleep and operate without scope. When we began conversations with Darktrace, we felt an instant connection on vision, culture and technology. That’s why we are looking forward to joining Darktrace and working together to accelerate innovations to make organisations more cyber secure.”

“Self-Learning AI and cyber security”

Founded in 2013, Darktrace is an AI company that uses cybersecurity solutions to identify, prevent, and eliminate insider threats. It aims to empower organisations to stop the disruption that cyber-threats can cause, across digital infrastructures everywhere.

The company was founded by Dave Palmer, Emily Orton, Jack Stockdale, Nicole Eagan, and Poppy Gustafsson.

Darktrace AI enables organisations of all industry sectors to build up resilience against novel attacks, by autonomously learning their ‘digital DNA’. Its Self-Learning AI enables machines to understand the business in order to autonomously defend it. The company says, “While conventional AI techniques rely on pre-labelled data sets and prior knowledge, Self-Learning AI learns ‘on the job’ from real-world data and constantly adapts.”

Currently, the company protects over 6,500 customers worldwide from advanced threats, including ransomware and cloud and SaaS attacks. It has over 1,700 employees and over 30 offices worldwide.

Aim of this acquisition

Darktrace claims that the acquisition of Cybersprint is aligned with its vision of delivering a ‘Continuous Cyber AI Loop’ and complements its self-learning technology and inside-out view.

Darktrace says it will gain a second European R&D Centre in the Hague, Netherlands, joining forces with its Cambridge-based mathematicians and software engineers. Cybersprint claims that its employees have a deep understanding of how to continuously model real-time internet data as well as ethical hacking expertise.

Cybersprint’s attack surface management data can enrich existing Darktrace Detect and Respond products with external vulnerability data and accelerate the company’s market entry into new areas like proactive AI cyber security, the companies claim.

This capability will be introduced as a new module in the Prevent product family, feeding organisation-specific web data to Darktrace’s Attack Path Modeling technology.

Poppy Gustafsson, CEO of Darktrace, says, “We are very excited to welcome the Cybersprint team to Darktrace. Bringing inside-out and outside-in visibility together is critical and having access to the robust, rich, real-time external dataset combined with Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI means that customers get a holistic view of prioritised cyber risks to harden the parts of their organisation that are most vulnerable. With this acquisition, we are able to leverage Cybersprint’s seven years of R&D to accelerate our Prevent product family, ultimately making it much harder for cyber-attackers to carry out successful missions.”