McAfee buys Skyhigh Networks to bolster cloud business

Cybersecurity firm McAfee said Monday that it's acquiring Skyhigh Networks to bolster its new cloud business unit. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

McAfee, which is once again an independent company after it was spun out from Intel in a deal with TPG, said the deal will usher in "a new era in cybersecurity" as the two companies work to combine their cloud and endpoint security platforms.

"Skyhigh Networks had the foresight five years ago to realize that cybersecurity for cloud environments could not be an impediment to, or afterthought of, cloud adoption," Chris Young, CEO of McAfee, said in a statement.

"They pioneered an entirely new product category called cloud access security broker (CASB) that analysts describe as one of the fastest growing areas of information security investments of the last five years - where Skyhigh continues to innovate and lead. Skyhigh's leadership in cloud security, combined with McAfee's security portfolio strength, will set the company apart in helping organizations operate freely and securely to reach their full potential."

Skyhigh CEO Rajiv Gupta will join McAfee to run the company's cloud business. In a blog post, he said the deal will give Skyhigh access to more financial resources to invest in its product roadmap.

McAfee was bought by Intel in 2011 and rebranded as Intel Security in 2014. A year later, Intel Security adjusted its strategy to refocus the business on endpoint and cloud as security control points, as well as actionable threat intelligence, analytics, and orchestration.

Since its split from Intel earlier this year, McAfee has pivoted to cloud services and worked to build out its platform. The broader cybersecurity market

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