Kaspersky has acquired 49% of Ximi Pro, a subsidiary of Ximi Lab that develops Tron, a comprehensive solution for the protection of software container infrastructures.

The acquisition will allow the company to develop an offering that would provide full-fledged protection within Cloud Workload Protection concept. It would also extend its upcoming XDR solution with the ability to detect and respond to threats in container’s infrastructure.

The global market for commercial container software is growing rapidly. According to Gartner forecasts, 70% of international companies will be running more than two containerised applications in production by 2023, up from less than 20% in 2019. The reason for such growth is explained by the opportunity to optimise corporate IT infrastructures and development processes by this virtualisation technology.

However, in some cases container infrastructure could be an initial vector of targeted attacks because of its incorrect configuration. To address such risks Kaspersky is expanding its portfolio with a container security solution.

This acquisition will allow Kaspersky to cover container infrastructure, application and the services based on it with Extended Detection and Response (XDR) scenarios. They will also be able to obtain additional telemetry from containers and their environments, providing adequate response actions, and ensuring more comprehensive security for organisations’ assets. Moreover, providing full visibility into container infrastructure, the new product will help companies identify suspicious behaviour and defend against threat actors who use containers misconfiguration in their attacks.

Andrey Efremov, chief business development officer at Kaspersky, says: “One of the key goals of our strategy is to develop an ecosystem that would cover all security needs of our enterprise customers. We see a growing demand for container security today in all types of industries, not only in software development and IT but also in manufacturing, finance, retail etc. as more and more companies use container infrastructure on a daily basis. I’m very excited we are adding this important capability to our growing portfolio.”

Artem Tovbin, general director of Ximi Lab, comments: “Our team has strived to improve the world around us and enhance its own expertise in information security, development culture and management. Cooperating with Kaspersky gives us an opportunity to work with one of the best international information security companies which allows us to create a world-class product. In today’s IT world any product is doomed to be secondary without an ecosystem, enterprise-level sales and a strong brand. Partnership with Kaspersky provides us with these advantages. We hope that our cooperation will supply the market with reliable information security tools and helps numerous businesses to focus on their core services and products.”

Kaspersky has already developed technologies providing protection within Cloud Workload Protection. In particular, the company offers Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security, a cloud-native solution for hybrid environments.