SolarWinds Acquires Trusted Metrics, Adding Threat Monitoring Capabilities

SolarWinds Tuesday said it has acquired real-time threat monitoring and management provider Trusted Metrics to boost its cybersecurity offerings.

"When we look at the rapidly changing IT security landscape, the proliferation of mass-marketed malware and the non-discriminatory approach of cybercriminals, we believe that real-time threat monitoring and management shouldn’t be a luxury, but an affordable option for everyone," SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson said in a statement. "The acquisition of Trusted Metrics will allow us to offer a new product in the SolarWinds' mold -- powerful, easy to use, scalable -- that is designed to give businesses the ability to more easily protect IT environments and business operations.’

That new security software product is called SolarWinds Threat Monitor, and is an automated tool designed to make it easier for an IT operations teams as well as MSPs and MSSPs to detect threats. Threat Monitor can root out suspicious activity and malware by aggregating asset data, security events, host intrusion detection and network intrusion detectio, and correlate that data with continuously updated threat intelligence, identifying the danger signals amid all the innocent noise of a normal network.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds said Threat Monitor is tightly integrated, automated and "priced to be within reach for most companies and service providers.’ The company said Threat Monitor is aimed at helping customers respond rapidly to emerging threats and make quicker, better decisions while using fewer resources.

Michael Menefee, CEO of Raleigh, N.C.-based Trusted Metrics, said using SolarWinds' reach to spread Trusted Metrics' capabilities is in line with what the company had hoped to accomplish as a ’security innovator.’

"We built a solution that’s designed to help companies of all sizes improve their ability to uncover incoming attacks and quickly detect breaches by correlating customers' network data with continuously refreshed threat intelligence -- helping them make better and faster incident-response decisions," Menefee said. "SolarWinds' reach and tech industry know-how make them a perfect fit for getting this solution into the hands of more and more technology professionals."

The move comes a month after SolarWinds rival Continuum said it had acquired Carvir, an MSP-focused developer of monitored and managed security technology.

With that acquisition Continuum significantly expanded its security business, including accelerating its plan to add a U.S.-based security operations center and security information and event management tools to its product and services portfolio.

Meanwhile, for SolarWinds the Trusted Metrics' deal is its second acquisition this year as the company also has been shoring up its offerings around cloud software.

In January SolarWinds purchased Loggly, a log monitoring and analytics specialist that provides Software as a Service to enterprise customers.

Loggly, a privately held vendor founded in 2009, allows businesses to proactively collect, organize and outline their log data for trend analysis and intelligent insight with its flagship logging solution. The San Francisco-based company is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and a Docker Ecosystem Technology Partner.

The Loggly buy was the first major acquisition by SolarWinds since the MSP platform provider was taken private by Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo in early 2016 in a deal valued at $4.5 billion.