Sophos Acquires Refactr

Products•Acquisition•Managed Threat Response (MTR)•Refactr•Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem (ACE)•Sophos XDR

Optimizing Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Capabilities

Aug 03 2021 By

Sophos has acquired Refactr, which develops and markets a versatile DevSecOps automation platform that bridges the gap between DevOps and cybersecurity.

As DevOps and security teams continue to adopt “IT-as-Code” approaches to managing their environments, Refactr’s ability to automate any of these processes enables teams to scale. Refactr has leading customers in both the private and government/public sectors, including the Center for Internet Security, and the US Air Force’s Platform One.

Sophos is optimizing Refactr’s DevSecOps automation platform to add Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to our Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions. The SOAR capabilities will also help automate Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all of Sophos’ product solutions, services, and alliance integrations. We plan to begin offering integrated SOAR options by early 2022.

First-generation SOAR solutions have moved our industry forward in significant ways, but we’re now witnessing an evolution where more and more businesses are becoming software companies, and our security solutions need to evolve in parallel. As we’ve seen in recent supply-chain incidents, attackers are increasingly targeting software development pipelines, and defenders need the ability to shift further left of attackers. The industry needs SOAR to mature into more capable and generalizable DevSecOps solutions, and Sophos’ acquisition of Refactr will help us lead the way.

With Refactr, Sophos will fast track the integration of such advanced SOAR capabilities into our Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, the basis for our XDR product and MTR service. We will provide a full spectrum of automated playbooks and pipelines for our customers and partners, from drag-and-drop to fully programmable, along with broad integrations with third-party solutions through our technology alliances program to work with today’s diverse IT environments.

Sophos will continue to develop and offer Refactr’s platform to their existing and growing base of partners and organizations that want to build customized IT and security automations for themselves and for their customers. Refactr’s Community Edition will continue to be available as well.

About the Author

Sophos is a global leader and innovator of advanced security solutions that defeat cyberattacks, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and incident response services and a broad portfolio of endpoint, network, email, and cloud security technologies. As one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity providers, Sophos defends more than 600,000 organizations and more than 100 million users worldwide from active adversaries, ransomware, phishing, malware, and more. Sophos’ services and products connect through the Sophos Central management console and are powered by Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-domain threat intelligence unit. Sophos X-Ops intelligence optimizes the entire Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which includes a centralized data lake that leverages a rich set of open APIs available to customers, partners, developers, and other cybersecurity and information technology vendors. Sophos provides cybersecurity-as-a-service to organizations needing fully managed security solutions. Customers can also manage their cybersecurity directly with Sophos’ security operations platform or use a hybrid approach by supplementing their in-house teams with Sophos’ services, including threat hunting and remediation. Sophos sells through reseller partners and managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.