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Israeli security firms Check Point, CyberArk in talks – report

Possible ‘Cyber Googleplex’ in the making, says paper

Israeli security firm Check Point is reportedly in preliminary talks with local rival CyberArk about a possible acquisition/merger.

Rumours of the courtship surfaced in Hebrew-language Israeli financial newspaper TheMarker on Wednesday, and lead to twitterings in some quarters that we were about to witness the birth of some sort Israeli "Cyber Googleplex”. Like that's a good thing.

CyberArk markets tech designed to prevent miscreants using insider privileges to attack enterprises, which might be thought of as a secondary layer of security defence.

Check Point sells a wide range of security technologies but is best known for its firewalls, historically the first line of enterprise security defences.

Deperimeterisation (protecting a company's data on multiple levels) and the BYOD trend have, of course, changed the role of firewalls, and Check Point has long diversified into VPNs, intrusion prevention and mobile security. The latter two were accomplished in large part via the acquisitions of NFR and Lacoon Mobile Security, respectively.

These earlier deals provide precedents. Check Point is sitting on a nest egg of $3.6bn in cash as of the third quarter 2015, Reuters reports, so it certainly has the financial wherewithal to pull off the deal. CyberArk's valuation has halved over the last six months and it’s currently capitalised at around $1.2bn.

A Check Point PR representative is yet to respond to El Reg’s request to comment. ®

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