ColorTokens has acquired PureID to strengthen its Xshield Microsegmentation platform. Microsegmentation is the latest evolution of network segmentation, a security and network technology that has existed since the 1980s and is seeing a new role today.
PureID is a security startup whose main solution is PureAuth, a passwordless authentication platform. The company claims to have the best account takeover protection available.
Rajesh Khazanchi, CEO of ColorTokens, said, “PureID’s identity-based segmentation aligns with our vision to provide stronger segmentation and smarter containment while still allowing reliably identified access to business-critical resources.
“These capabilities play a key role in the continuous enhancement of our Xshield product to ensure organizations are effectively protected from the growing risk of cybersecurity threats.”
What is Microsegmentation?
Network segmentation started in the late 1980s with the growth of Local Area Networks. It was a solution to the limitations of early local area network deployments. Rather than a large network with insufficient bandwidth to handle growing network traffic, it split the network into multiple smaller, but connected, networks.
It later evolved into a security solution to separate networks carrying highly sensitive traffic from general-purpose network segments. One beneficial impact of this was to limit the ability of attackers to traverse the network once they had gained access. Moving across network segments requires passing through security devices and having different levels of credentials and permissions.
Microsegmentation takes that further by breaking networks down into ever-smaller zones that contain a mix of devices and virtual machines. It is often workload-related, which allows it to be far more focused. There is also no need to reconfigure the physical elements of the network, making it easier to deploy in existing environments. It is a key technology for zero-trust networks.
Why is ColorTokens acquiring PureID?
ColorTokens wants to use PureID’s technology to enhance the security around its Xshield platform. The company says it will bring a range of new benefits for customers. Among those singled out by the company are :
- Cloud and Containerized Environments: Traditional microsegmentation uses infrastructure attributes like IPs, which are changeable in dynamic environments. Identity-based microsegmentation ensures effective policy enforcement by relying on strong identities agnostic to infrastructure changes.
- IoT and OT Environments: Distributed infrastructures with firewalls and NATs complicate traditional identification. Identity-based microsegmentation ensures accurate policy enforcement with strong identities, fully securing these environments.
- User Environments: Traditional user policies fail as users move between locations and share infrastructure. Identity-based microsegmentation enforces user-specific policies, maintaining security across diverse environments.
ColorTokens’ also sees this as something it needs as it seeks to expand its Xshield platform. It says, “As organizations increasingly adopt cloud, IoT, and mobile user environments, the need for fail-safe adaptive security measures becomes paramount. This is where identity-based microsegmentation comes into play, offering a powerful solution to ensure effective and assured segmentation across various scenarios.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
This is a good move by ColorTokens. It gets the technology it needs to expand its product sales and it gets a chance to cross-sell to PureID’s customers. At the same time it is playing an interesting hand with the acquisition.
It says that PureID will deliver the technology that it needs for its Xshield platform. At the same time, PureID is being allowed to expand its existing PureAUTH passwordless and MFA platform. It also appears that PureID is getting the best of this deal. The question is, how long will it be allowed to operate as a separate entity?
