Sumo Logic Acquires FactorChain, Targets Security Analytics for Cloud and Application Delivery

PRESS RELEASE

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Jan. 23, 2018 -- Sumo Logic, the leading cloud-native, machine data analytics platform that delivers continuous intelligence, today announced it has acquired FactorChain, an early stage security company with a Security Investigation Platform which makes transformational improvements in speed and depth of threat investigations, enabling resolution of complex threats spanning both IT and security in minutes instead of hours. Combined with Sumo Logic’s machine data analytics strength across the cloud infrastructure, platform, and application layers, this acquisition accelerates the development of a new class of converged IT Ops and Security solutions which are essential for modern application delivery in the cloud.

“We are seeing more and more digital businesses struggling to adapt traditional security models to cloud and modern application delivery,” said Ramin Sayar, CEO of Sumo Logic. "Resolving which threats to assess in the avalanche of alerts and how to quickly resolve them is a challenging enough problem in traditional IT environments, but in the dynamic large scale cloud environment this problem can’t possibly be answered without new thinking in security analytics and operations. The FactorChain acquisition accelerates our vision of a new model which converges operations and security in the cloud and provides innovative solutions to persistent challenges in investigation workflows at cloud scale. We’re thrilled to welcome the team onboard to drive our shared vision and disrupt traditional legacy SIEM markets moving too slowly to keep pace with accelerating cloud transitions.”

Cloud and Modern Application Delivery Requires New Model for Security

Traditional approaches of siloed information, systems, and staff are not keeping pace with the scale or rate of change in dynamic modern cloud application delivery. Fundamental challenges with understanding application and cloud data with existing tools and skill sets, resolving IT vs. security symptoms and root causes, and quickly triangulating across cloud scale data sets to resolve threats are preventing the natural extension of traditional methods to the cloud. Further, DevOps models require security to align traditional centralized, backlog approaches to threat investigation to new rapid response, distributed and democratized models. Along with scope of workflow and insight, fundamental breakthroughs are needed in data search, navigation, and human-machine collaboration to enable the velocity demanded by these new models.

“We have redesigned our security defense in several fundamental areas to scale the defense of our cloud service and applications - traditional concepts of rigid, centralized security operations centers with cumbersome SIEM infrastructure have given way to decentralized agile models which blend workflows and insight across operations and security,” said Jarrod Sexton, Lead Security Engineer at Genesys. “Sumo Logic has been instrumental in converging these two worlds for us, and having seen FactorChain’s investigation platform and integration plans we are enthusiastic to see the company innovating to address the next wave of unsolved pain points in cloud security.”

As part of Sumo Logic security analytics solution, FactorChain’s investigation platform will integrate completely into Sumo’s SaaS Machine Data Analytics Platform, providing step function improvements in speed, accuracy, and retained learning of threat investigation workflows across IT and Security. Integrated data, analytics, and workflow will enable analysts to resolve complex investigations in minutes while quickly identifying infection spread and applying accumulated learning across IT and security teams. Leveraging the FactorChain acquired domain expertise, natively developed capabilities to correlate and prioritize threats with unique insight across the application and infrastructure layer will focus joint security and IT teams on the right threats to investigate.  Learning on both workflow and data models from these services will provide insight on other IT and security processes including alert tuning, configuration, policy, prioritization, etc.

“Cloud and modern application deployments demand a fundamentally new approach to security threat investigation - workflows must span both the application and infrastructure layers, integrate seamlessly across both Security and ITOps, and enable resolution in minutes,” said Dave Frampton, founder and CEO for FactorChain. “FactorChain’s innovations in web speed contextual search, information models for rapid insight in large data sets, and investigation workflows which maximize human & machine synergy will combine with Sumo Logic’s machine data analytics platform to scale security for cloud & modern application delivery. We’re thrilled to join the SumoLogic team are pursue our shared vision of a new converged security IT model for the cloud.”

As part of the acquisition, Sumo Logic has incorporated the entire FactorChain team along with Industry veteran leadership into its engineering and product teams. Dave Frampton, FactorChain co-founder and CEO, will be VP of Security Solutions leading the company’s security analytics business. Ken Tidwell, FactorChain co-founder and CTO and former chief architect of ArcSight, will be VP of Security Engineering leading the security analytics development and architecture.