Coro Buys Privatise to Infuse SASE With Network Connectivity

The New York-based company said its acquisition of Jerusalem-based Privatise will provide Coro clients with a secure way to connect, manage and filter out malicious content, according to co-founder Dror Liwer. He said Privatise’s technology will fill out Coro’s secure access service edge offering and address the needs of remote workers with DNS filtering, content filtering and zero trust network analysis.

“It’s as if our UX designer designed their product,” Liwer told Information Security Media Group. “All four pillars of how we view our platform exist in Privatise, which made it a lot easier for us to look at them as an acquisition target.”

Nurturing New Network Security Capabilities

The Privatise acquisition completely complements Coro’s existing tools for endpoint, email, cloud, data and user security since the company didn’t have any capability around firewalls, content filtering or ZTNA, Liwer said. With Privatise’s technology, Coro can now safeguard both on-premises and off-premises networks as well as remote access, according to Liwer.

“The less products you need to manage, the safer you are.”

– Dror Liwer, co-founder, Coro

Terms of the deal – which closed earlier this year – weren’t disclosed, and Liwer said all eight Privatise employees have joined Coro. Once Privatise’s technology is fully integrated later this year, customers will be able to address endpoint, network, cloud, email, user and data security through a single agent. Midmarket customers benefit from a single agent approach given what upgrading or removing an agent entails.

“Having this one agent that does all different aspects – regardless of which functionality is being used on the back-end – is a massive benefit,” Liwer said. “Second, having one platform to manage all of this – endpoint, email, ZTNA, remote access – from one platform is a massive benefit as well.”

Liwer said both Coro and Privatise specialize in organizations with between 200 and 2,000 employees, serving businesses in verticals ranging from education, financial services and professional services to automotive and construction. Coro’s customer base was exclusively located in the U.S. prior to the Privatise acquisition, but the deal will extend the company into Europe.

More Acquisitions on the Horizon?

Privatise’s capabilities are only available through channel partners today and will be made available directly to end customers next quarter once the integration is complete, Liwer said. The Privatise module will cost $5 per user per month, according to Liwer.

This is Coro’s first acquisition since it was founded nine years ago, and it comes three months after Coro completed a $75 million funding round led by Energy Impact Partners. Going forward, Liwer said, Coro plans to make between two and three acquisitions each year focused both on new areas such as security awareness training and phishing simulations as well as firms with significant revenue and customer base.

From a metrics standpoint, Liwer said, Coro plans to track revenue growth, vendor consolidation and customer retention. Liwer wants Coro’s capabilities to be as good as or better than the point solutions in areas such as email and endpoint security while delivering the value associated with consolidating the security budget around a smaller number of providers.

“Nobody does what we do, but everybody does a part of what we do,” Liwer said. “Our offering is all about making it simplified, making it automated and making it affordable. The less products you need to manage, the safer you are.”