The security outfit which knows no vowels, Snyk, has bought a start-up that snoops on live applications, Helios.
For those not in the know, Helios is named after the Roman sun god and has developed some fancy technology to spot security bugs in running apps.
Snyk did not say how much it paid for Helios or how many staff it would keep.
Snyk said the acquisition was a “milestone” in its quest to dominate the application security posture management (ASPM) market. ASPM is a buzzword that means keeping track of all the apps in your environment and ensuring they are secure.
Helios will help it to offer “comprehensive visibility” across app environments, “more effective” prioritisation of risk, and “full-stack” runtime data. In other words, the company said that Snyk will be able to see everything, tell you what to fix, and collect a lot of data.
The acquisition comes after Snyk launched a new tool called AppRisk, which it said can automatically discover and manage code-based app assets. Snyk said AppRisk was powered by another start-up it bought in June 2023, Enso Security.
Snyk CEO Peter McKay said that buying start-ups has helped Snyk to impress application security teams, not just developers.
He said that in the past, Snyk was “really heavily weighted to the developer” and maybe not “focused enough on the security side”. He said Enso gave Snyk what it needed to “bring both of those together”.
McKay also said Snyk is ready to woo channel partners after becoming a $7.4 billion company. He stated that “the timing is right” for Snyk to “invest more aggressively” in the channel because they “get it now”.
He said that they see the need to “shift left” and “embed developer security”.We wonder if Snyk will shift left enough to avoid the right hook from its competitors.
