Globes, an Israeli business news source, reported that PayPal has acquired another Israeli company — this time it’s a cybersecurity firm called CyActive, a startup funded by Jerusalem Venture Partners.
Although PayPal has not formally confirmed the deal, the site reported that PayPal bought CyActive for somewhere between $60 million-$80 million, according to a source who was not named in the story. The deal is said to have been signed and will close soon, reported Globes, which noted that PayPal’s other Israel company purchase was FraudSciences — a company that monitors financial fraud. PayPal did not provide any confirmation of the deal to Globes.
On CyActive’s website, the company shared its views on combatting cybersecurity: “Cybersecurity has become one of the greatest challenges of the century. A concern shared by both governments and corporations, cyber attacks account for hundreds of billions in stolen funds and IP, as well as damage to mission-critical systems.”
“Meanwhile, the number and severity of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) grows at an alarming rate. The current cybersecurity paradigm is a reactive cycle: if and when a threat is exposed, it is analyzed and a counter-solution is designed. Response times vary from weeks to years. Even if a solution is made available, attackers can easily modify the original code, evade the updated security measures, and once again a new threat is born,” the company’s website states.
CyActive started in 2003 and raised $2 million in that time from foreign investors, Globes reported. This is said to include “German giant Siemens, Israeli venture capital firm JVP, and an additional foreign investor.”
Most recently for PayPal, it has affirmed its cybersecurity plans; it recently gave an update about how the company is protecting its customers from fraudulent emails. Recently, J. Trent Adams, the senior Internet Security Advisor at PayPal, shared what the company has been doing for the past six years and how it plans to continue its focus on protecting its customers in collaboration with major players in the industry.
“After dedicating six years to the problem we set out to address, our commitment to combat fraudulent email is making a real difference,” Adams wrote. “Something that started as another big idea became [Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, & Conformance], and now we can see that it’s clearly protecting our customers from spoofed domain attacks. And although this is only one of many types of attacks, it is satisfying to tick the checkbox as we shift our focus to our next big idea as we continue to aggressively protect our customers against all manner of attacks.”
Geektime.com, reporting based on the Globes’ story, spoke with Yoav Tzruya, a partner at Jerusalem Venture Partners, who claimed that CyActive has the capacity to stop major attacks and could have played a role in helping prevent the Sony attack. Because of its advanced technology, Tzruya claimed that CyActive would have spotted the source of the attack earlier.
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