The Zscaler-Smokescreen Technologies partnership is a big vote of confidence for India’s nascent cybersecurity startup sector, which has been gaining traction in recent years.
Smokescreen Technologies, a Mumbai-based cybersecurity firm, has been bought by Zscaler, a cloud-security firm based in San Jose, California. The deal’s size was not disclosed, but it is expected to be completed by July 2021.
The Zscaler-Smokescreen Technologies partnership is a big vote of confidence for India’s nascent cybersecurity startup industry, which has been gaining traction in recent years.
Sahir Hidyatullah and Raviraj Doshi founded Smokescreen Technologies in 2015 after working as cybercrime investigators and other jobs before deciding to pursue entrepreneurship.
Smokescreen, which uses active defence and deception to stop assaults, will be integrated into the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, according to a statement from Zscaler. This would aid the company in detecting “targeted attacks, ransomware, and lateral movement attempts. Additionally, Smokescreen will help provide rich threat intelligence and telemetry for the Zscaler team to proactively hunt for emerging adversary tactics and techniques.”
Zscaler’s shares rose 7 percent at the closing of trading in the United States as a result of the deal and better-than-expected performance. Zscaler has a market capitalization of $17 billion.
The products of the company are based on the concept of deception. Their Illusion Black deception platform builds decoys that seem and act like the genuine thing, luring attackers down blind alleys while turning the tables on them and extracting information. These are honeytraps that are used to attract and catch black-hat hackers who are messing about with a company’s servers.