Tenable acquires Bit Discovery to help organizations minimize cyber exposure

Tenable Holdings announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Bit Discovery, a provider of external attack surface management (EASM).

Combining Tenable’s Cyber Exposure solutions with Bit Discovery’s EASM capabilities will provide customers with a differentiated 360-degree view of the modern attack surface – both inside out and outside in – to identify and eliminate areas of known and unknown security risk.

Discovering and gaining insight into every part of a business’s digital footprint are essential steps of any effective cybersecurity program. Discovery has never been more critical, given the reliance on critical internet-facing services, applications and APIs. The problem for most organizations is that they are largely blind to the full and ever-changing scope of internet-facing assets and services. With its powerful EASM solution, Bit Discovery eliminates this problem by continuously monitoring the Internet, allowing customers to rapidly discover and identify all externally facing assets that could become exploitable targets by cyber criminals.

After closing, Tenable will leverage Bit Discovery’s EASM solutions across its entire portfolio – from enterprise vulnerability management (VM) to Nessus, from cloud to operational technology (OT) to identity. Once integrated, customers will have the ability to assess the security posture of their entire attack surface and understand each of these in the context of an attack path which might exist from external systems to critical assets. By covering both external and internal assets, Tenable will provide a comprehensive view of vulnerabilities and cyber risk, allowing customers to prioritize remediation efforts and minimize cyber exposure.

“Whatever is visible on the internet is very likely to be the first target and the hardest thing for organizations to continuously see and assess. We believe attack surface management is vital to modern cybersecurity and an integral part of our vulnerability and Cyber Exposure solutions,” said Glen Pendley, chief technology officer, Tenable. “We are seamlessly combining previously disjointed insights and empowering security practitioners to eliminate blind spots and easily understand their cyber exposure in ways previously not possible.”

“Bit Discovery’s founding mission is to help enterprises identify their internet-facing attack surface area and continually monitor and manage their exposure. Joining Tenable will give us the ability to instantly reach 40,000 global customers, accelerating our vision in ways that would have otherwise been impossible,” said Jeremiah Grossman, CEO and co-founder, Bit Discovery. “This capability combined with the insights provided by Tenable’s solutions is a compelling chance to change the market.”

Bit Discovery was founded by Jeremiah Grossman and Robert Hansen. Grossman, who also founded WhiteHat Security, has spent approximately 20 years in information security, during which he has become an industry luminary. Hansen previously served as a security pioneer at eBay, where he was responsible for authentication as well as anti-fraud and anti-phishing technologies.

Under the terms of the agreement, Tenable will acquire Bit Discovery for a total purchase price of $44.5 million in cash, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. The acquisition is expected to close later in the second quarter of 2022, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Bit Discovery is not expected to have a significant impact on Tenable’s financial results in the second quarter. For the second half of the year, revenue is not expected to be significant, but Bit Discovery is expected to add $2 million to $3 million of Calculated Current Billings, most notably in the latter part of the year, and $2 million to $3 million of non-GAAP Net Loss.