MSP Cybersecurity Company Sophos Bought Out for $3.9 Billion

Cybersecurity company for MSPs Sophos has gone private this week, following a $3.9 billion buyout by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. Sophos specializes in working with MSPs and resellers to protect them from advanced cyberthreats.

Both Sophos and Thoma Bravo stressed that the company will remain focused on an MSP-centric strategy. Sophos currently protects more than 100 million users and 420,000 organizations from cyberthreats. The Sophos Central cloud-based management platform offers single pane of glass management of security as well as real-time information sharing and threat response. The company also provides Sophos Managed Threat Response services, offering 24/7 security as well as fully-managed threat hunting, detection and response, across endpoints and firewalls.

“Our transition to become a fully next-gen cybersecurity leader continues to rapidly progress,” said Kris Hagerman, CEO of Sophos. “Last quarter, our next-gen product portfolio represented over 60 percent of our entire business, and grew 44 percent year-over-year. And very recently, we launched our most significant network security technology ever, the Sophos XG Firewall with Xstream architecture.”

Sophos has made several key announcements over the past month, including the Xstream architecture. It features high performance Transport Layer Security traffic decryption capabilities designed to eliminate the security risks of encrypted network traffic. The XG Firewall offering was also enhanced to include AI-based threat analysis from Sophos Labs as well as accelerated application performance.

The company also recently rolled out version 18 of its XG Firewall solution. The latest version includes a variety of new features like the cloud-based Central Firewall Reporting tool, which addresses visibility, protection and performance problems. The tool also lets customers create historical, customized reports about network activity.

“Sophos has been constantly raising the bar with its industry-leading synchronized security, advanced deep learning technology and rapid growth within the MSP channel,” said Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “We are excited to partner with Sophos to help build upon their success as they further drive innovation in cybersecurity.”

Thoma Bravo focuses on investments in the MSP-centric software market, as well as cybersecurity and IT management spaces. The firm owns a variety of portfolio companies, including Barracuda, ConnectWise and SolarWinds.