RSA Roundup: McAfee M&A, BlackBerry, Trustifi, BigID

McAfee‘s acquisition of Light Point Security and product news from by BlackBerry, Trustifi and BigID marked the opening of the 2020 RSA Conference in San Francisco.

“In its 29-year history, RSA Conference has evolved to meet new demands of the ever-changing world of cybersecurity,” said Linda Gray Martin, RSA Conference’s senior director and general manager. “But one thing has always remained constant, and that’s the importance of the human element in driving the industry forward.”

McAfee plans to integrate Light Point’s browser isolation technology into McAfee Secure Web Gateway, complementing its existing inbound and outbound protection for all web and cloud traffic. Financial details of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

McAfee’s Ash Kulkarni

“Web browsing is one of the most common threat vectors for endpoints to get infected,” said Ash Kulkarni, executive vice president and chief product officer in McAfee‘s enterprise business group. “Adding Light Point Security’s capabilities into our products will create solutions that enable our customers to mitigate web-based threats without impacting user experience. We are constantly working to find ways to help our customers safely adopt the cloud so they enjoy increased productivity without experiencing heightened concerns about cyberattacks. Light Point Security’s browser isolation capabilities will bolster the McAfee Unified Cloud Edge offering to make it a preferred solution for security-focused businesses without compromising on productivity.”

In addition, McAfee has launched a global managed detection and response (MDR) platform in collaboration with DXC Technology, and has unveiled new innovations to its cloud-native MVision platform with the availability of Unified Cloud Edge (UCE), which provides unified data and threat protection from device level to the cloud.

Also at RSA, BlackBerry unveiled its new BlackBerry Spark platform with a new unified endpoint security (UES) layer which can work with BlackBerry unified endpoint management (UEM) to deliver zero-trust security. Using AI, ML and automation, Spark now offers improved cyberthreat prevention and remediation, and provides visibility across desktop, mobile, server, and IoT (including automotive) endpoints.

Richard McLeod, BlackBerry‘s global vice president of enterprise software channels, said the Spark platform and his company’s zero trust/unified endpoint security architecture represent “significant security consultation, professional and managed services, and high value-add security sales opportunities” for BlackBerry partners.

BlackBerry’s Richard McLeod

“With this announcement, endpoint protection platform, endpoint defense and response, mobile threat defense and continuous authentication solutions are available today for authorized BlackBerry partners,” he said. “Enabling our partners to bridge the security requirements from servers to laptops to mobile devices, from endpoints to applications, to IoT and automobiles.”

​​​​​In addition, with the Spark platform, partners can take advantage of BlackBerry’s software development kit (SDK) to integrate intelligent security into their apps and services,” McLeod said.

“For example, in upcoming releases an ISV that is already using our Dynamics SDK will be able to leverage BlackBerry’s advanced Mobile Threat Defense within their application without having to add any code,” he said.

Also at RSA:

• Trustifi, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) email security company, has just incorporated a new AI-enabled feature into its email encryption and data loss prevention (DLP) solution that also works via optical character recognition technology (OCR). The tool recognizes elements such as a scan of a credit card or a screenshot of a financial statement, and categorizes those attachments as sensitive. It then automatically encrypts the attachment, reducing the opportunity for employees/individuals to mistakenly transmit confidential material unprotected.
• BigID announced next-generation data security capabilities, with features that apply BigID’s ML algorithms, designed originally to facilitate compliance with privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy (CCPA), to dark data. This solution uses advanced data discovery and ML-driven cluster analysis to identify, classify and process unstructured files, and retroactively addressing glaring security blindspots and getting ahead of future issues.