US cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike is in advanced talks to buy Orion Security, an Israeli data security startup, in a deal of about $500 million. Calcalist first reported the news. CrowdStrike has not confirmed, and according to reports it is not certain the sides will reach a binding agreement.
What Orion does
Orion uses AI to protect sensitive corporate data by analyzing the context of how information moves inside the organization: who sends what, to whom, and why. It is a different approach from veteran data loss prevention (DLP) systems that rely on fixed rules. The company has raised about $38 million, including a $32 million Series A led by Norwest in February.
A familiar pattern
If the deal goes ahead, it will join a long line of CrowdStrike's Israeli acquisitions: Seraphic Security, estimated by Calcalist at about $400 million, Adaptive Shield at about $300 million, Flow Security and Bionic. In October CrowdStrike also bought XM Cyber's technology, a deal that ended with most Israeli employees laid off.
Note
According to RuntimeWire, the basis for the $500 million figure is unclear, so it should be treated as an estimate. Either way, data security in an era when AI agents access huge amounts of corporate data is one of the hottest fields in cybersecurity, as Proofpoint's $6.3 billion purchase of Varonis also showed.
