McAfee today said it acquired NanoSec for an undisclosed amount to boost its container security capabilities.

NanoSec, a 4-year-old startup based in Cupertino, California, developed a multi-cloud, application-centric security platform. It uses what NanoSec calls a “wrapper” that segments each application to enforce a zero-trust model with a behavior-based whitelist. This only allows necessary actions and connections in the application and blocks anything else. It also prevents threats from moving laterally through the network.

Additionally, NanoSec’s platform provides agentless container scanning and configuration audits. It runs on any flavor of Linux and many Windows operating systems, and customers can use it on premises, in the cloud, or as software-as-a-service.

McAfee says it will integrate NanoSec’s technology into its cloud access security broker (CASB) called McAfee Mvision Cloud and its Mvision cloud workload protection platform (CWPP). Adding NanoSec to these McAfee products will improve continuous configuration compliance and vulnerability assessment as well as runtime application-level segmentation for detecting and preventing lateral movement of threats, said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice president and general manager of the cloud security business unit at McAfee.

“NanoSec’s technology is a natural extension for McAfee Mvision Cloud, enhancing our current CASB and CWPP products, and adding to our ‘shift-left’ capabilities to deliver on the DevSecOps best practice to improve governance and security,” said Gupta in a statement. “NanoSec’s team brings a wealth of experience to McAfee, and together we are committed to enabling organizations to reach their full cloud potential.”

As more and more organizations adopt container technologies — Gartner forecasts that by 2022 more than 75% of global companies will use containers in production, compared to less than 30% today — scooping up a container-focused security startup is a smart move for McAfee, which has been working to bolster its enterprise cloud security business during the past few years.

But, as fellow legacy firewall vendor turned cloud security company Symantec can also attest to, it’s not an easy transition. After several unsuccessful attempts, Symantec yesterday said it reached a deal with Broadcom that will see the chipmaker the buy Symantec’s enterprise security business for $10.7 billion.

And McAfee has followed a similar storyline. Earlier this year it laid off 200 employees, or about 4% of its global workforce, amid buyout rumors. This followed a smaller round of job cuts over the summer as well as layoffs in 2017. The company also eliminated hundreds more open positions.

However, just last month the Wall Street Journal reported that McAfee was preparing an initial public offering that could raise at least $1 billion as early as this year. And today’s acquisition bodes well for the security vendor’s future. Still, only time will tell if McAfee’s story ends on a high or low note.