Security vendor Forcepoint acquired Bitglass in a move to bolster its fledgling secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

While neither party disclosed the terms of the deal, Bitglass has raised approximately $150 million across four funding rounds since it was founded in 2013.

Both vendors were quick to throw their weight behind the Gartner-coined SASE product category last year. And according to Forcepoint CEO Manny Rivelo, the acquisition accelerates the vendor’s mission to provide customers secure access to workloads running anywhere, whether it’s on the web, in the cloud, or on-premises.

Bitglass offers a majority of key security functionality required for a SASE architecture. The company boasts cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG), and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) functionality, as well as data loss prevention (DLP) and cloud security posture management capabilities.

By unifying these capabilities under a single product offering, Forcepoint claims it can address one of the biggest challenges facing enterprises today. “When the average CISO is managing 50-plus security products of loosely connected technologies, its clear the industry is challenged and needs to change,” Rivelo said in a statement.

Neil MacDonald, the Gartner analysts responsible for dreaming up the SASE product category, called out these silos as an immediate opportunity for enterprises in a keynote speech during Palo Alto Network’s SASE Converge virtual event late last month.

By consolidating SWG, ZTNA, CASB, and cloud-based firewalls under a single vendor, MacDonald said enterprises could support remote workers and contractors, while eliminating point products and simplifying management.

Forcepoint hasn’t said how it plans to integrate Bitglass into its broader SASE and security service edge products, promising to share this information later this year.

Forcepoint officialy entered the SASE market with a two-pronged strategy in July 2020.

The company’s Cloud Security Guard bundles SWG, CASB, malware detection, and DLP into a single cloud-managed platform. It also offers remote browser isolation as an add-on service. Meanwhile, the company’s Private Access platform paired its ZTNA with its cloud-based firewall service to provide secure access to applications running in the corporate data center.

These products are designed to integrate with existing SD-WAN services or with Forcepoint’s own cloud-based SD-WAN platform, which can be configured to work with customer’s existing routing or firewall appliances.

According to Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, Forcepoint's "data-first" approach to SASE has been limited by the company's reliance on its firewalls as a source of data. "Given the massive shift to work from home, the firewall is becoming less relevant," he added.

"Bitglass brings a number of security tools to Forcepoint that are better aligned with the future of work. In fact, when I talk to customers about their SASE deployments, it typically starts with CASB, SWG, and ZTNA. This gives Forcepoint a much broader set of data that's relevant to the way businesses are operating," Kerravala said.

650 Group analyst Chris DePuy echoed Kerravala's sentiments, calling the acquisition a "smart move" for Forcepoint. It’s “consistent with our view that there will be significant consolidation in both the security and networking industries in the coming years,” he told SDxCentral in response to questions.

While some vendors have built their own security stacks in house, others have opted to acquire complimentary software vendors to achieve a SASE architecture, he added.

“While both in-house development, acquisitions, and partnering are all valid approaches to the market, getting to market quickly in the rapidly growing SASE market is what is most important,” DePuy said. “We think that enterprise customers will want a single-pane-of-glass approach for SASE that allows them to manage distributed, multi-technology systems.”