SUSE acquired end-to-end container security vendor NeuVector for $130 million in a deal that further extends its reach into the cloud-native security space, which is “both a very deep and very wide space,” Sheng Liang, president of engineering and innovation at SUSE, told SDxCentral.

Security is becoming increasingly relevant within the open source community, and customers expect SUSE's Rancher platform to ensure security capabilities of Kubernetes workloads, Liang said. “That’s not Rancher’s focus,” he explained, adding that security “is an area we definitely see a gap.”

Although Liang believes SUSE could have built security capabilities like scanning container images and ensuring runtime security of containerized workloads in-house, acquiring NeuVector “greatly accelerates our ability to bring these capabilities to customers,” he said. SUSE plans to open source NeuVector’s platform and fully integrate it into Rancher.

“Security is a very vibrant and innovative space, and there are a lot of ways to solve the problem,” Liang said, adding that NeuVector’s network-based approach offers the least intrusive and most capable container security.

NeuVector is “very strong with network inspections,” he explained. This renders the platform widely applicable to various workload orchestration methods and made it an appealing buy for SUSE. “We truly believe NeuVector offers the best security platform for SUSE Rancher,” Liang wrote in a blog post detailing the acquisition.

As cloud-native computing advances, customers expect more security capabilities within Kubernetes platforms and vendors have a greater sense of responsibility to meet those expectations. 

For example, the serverless computing space is reaching new levels of maturity, and as serverless adoption accelerates, security must accelerate in tandem. “When serverless- or function-as-a-service comes along, then it's very, very easy for us to extend and adapt NeuVector to work on those platforms as well,” Liang said.

“SUSE is clearly a company in transition,” he added. “I think we're one of the very few companies who are able to rise up to the demand of our customers.”

The NeuVector deal follows SUSE’s acquisition of Rancher Labs last year. That deal combined SUSE’s enterprise portfolio with Rancher’s Kubernetes management platform to give customers greater control of their applications throughout their cloud stack, and it also brought along Liang, who was co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs.

“It's really not a secret that we're going to continue to expand our offerings,” Liang said of the vendor’s future plans. “From platform to infrastructure, I think everything is going Kubernetes. Everything is going cloud native."