Fortinet Makes an Acquisition for One of the Fastest-Growing Segments of Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly complex problem for organizations to manage. In this age of mobility powered by smartphones and cloud computing, businesses have to protect an increasingly decentralized workforce that could be accessing data and operating systems from anywhere. The explosion in mobile devices -- known as "endpoints" in industry parlance -- and rise of cloud-based operations has led to a shortage in cybersecurity talent for many IT teams.

That's where services like SOAR (security orchestration automation and response) and SIEM (security information and event management) come into play. The systems automate the gathering of data to help detect and respond to threats from cyber-based baddies, using things like machine learning (a branch of artificial intelligence) to help security teams keep up.

It's been a small but fast-growing segment of cybersecurity, and global spending on SOAR and SIEM services is expected to grow by low- to mid-teens percentage rates on its way to topping a few billion dollars spent annually in about five years' time. Thanks to a string of acquisitions a couple of years ago, big data analytics firm Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK) is a leader in SOAR and SIEM.

Source Fool.com