Verano Inc., a maker of industrial security systems, has acquired the Managed Security Services Division of e-DMZ Security, LLC, in a deal that will extend Verano's SCADA security offering with a subscription-based, co-managed service. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Earlier this week, the company announced the completion of the deal and its rebranded Industrial Defender Co-Managed Security service, which combines real-time SCADA and control security with remote diagnostic capabilities.
Verano's flagship product, Industrial Defender, is an appliance that offers perimeter protection to legacy control systems. It functions as the first line of defense against network and SCADA process control intrusion. In January of this year, Verano acquired PlantData Technologies Inc., a security consulting firm specializing in assessing and establishing policy procedures for real-time industrial environments. The e-DMZ acquisition rounds out Verano's offerings, officials said.
"It's the last piece of puzzle," said Brian Ahern, Verano's president and CEO, in an interview with Managing Automation. "We knew we had all of the alarms and alerts within the Industrial Defender console. The next logical offering was to [provide] that alerting capability as a managed security service."
When Verano went shopping for a managed security service vendor, it found that most catered to government and financial organizations. e-DMZ stood out because it does 95% of its business in the chemicals sector, which not only fit the criteria for having expertise in a real-time, high-availability industrial environment, but also brought Verano into a new market. Verano has traditionally focused on four verticals: power, water, energy, and mass transit.
With this acquisition, Verano picks up 12 new customers, each of whom will be given the option of upgrading to a full-service security offering. Verano's security operations center (SOC), located in e-DMZ's existing Wilmington, DE, office, will be expanded to include a backup center in Calgary, Alberta, where Verano -- headquartered in Mansfield, MA -- already has a presence.
With Verano's new subscription service, if Industrial Defender detects a security breach, an alarm is sounded at the customer's site and at Verano's SOC, which is staffed with trained security analysts 24x7, year round. Verano analysts will then provide in-depth diagnostics and work with the customer to define threat levels and determine a course of action.
Verano is filling an industry void with its new offering, analysts said. "This is an area that manufacturers are increasingly in need of," said Bob Mick, vice president of ARC Advisory Group, in an interview. "They are [already] using outside help relative to security today. Some of them use either corporate security services, like Symantec or Cisco, others go to consultants, like maybe IBM, for example. But in each of those cases, [those vendors'] actual manufacturing knowledge is weaker than Verano's, which is totally focused on the operations side."
In the short term, the e-DMZ business will account for about 25% of privately held Verano's revenue, Ahern said, but within three years he expects the managed service offering to represent more than 50% of the company's business. Industry interest will likely be buoyed by future acquisitions as well, Ahern said. He noted that the company is reviewing deals that would provide encryption products and security planning services and also expand its presence in Europe.