Acquisitions and partnerships
In 2003, Sophos acquired ActiveState, a Canadian software company that developed anti-spam software.[24] From September 2003 to February 2006, Sophos served as the parent company of ActiveState, a developer of programming tools for dynamic programming languages: in February 2006, ActiveState became an independent company when it was sold to Vancouver-based venture capitalist firm Pender Financial.[25]
In 2007, Sophos acquired ENDFORCE, a company based in Ohio, United States, which developed and sold security policy compliance and network access control (NAC) software.[26][27]
In July 2008, Sophos agreed to acquire Utimaco, a publicly-held company focused on encryption and other data security products, for over $340 million;[28] the acquisition closed for $314 million in September 2008.[29] In October 2013, Utimaco was divested via a management buyout involving investors PINOVA Capital and BIP Investment Partners.[30]
In May 2011, Sophos announced the acquisition of Astaro, a privately held provider of network security products, headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA and Karlsruhe, Germany.[31] At the time Astaro was the 4th largest UTM (Unified Threat Management) vendor and while the deal made sense at the time Forbes questioned its viability.[32] Sophos subsequently renamed the Astaro UTM to Sophos UTM.
In February 2014, Sophos announced that it had acquired Cyberoam Technologies, a provider of network security products.[33]
In December 2015, Sophos merged with Surfright, the company behind the malware scanner HitmanPro. They would later integrate HitmanPro Alert, an anti malicious program designed to detect malicious behavior and stop it into Sophos.[34]
In November 2016, Sophos acquired Barricade, a start-up with a behavior-based analytics engine.[35]
In February 2017, Sophos acquired Invincea, a software company that provides malware threat detection, prevention, and pre-breach forensic intelligence.[36][37][38]
In October 2024, Sophos agreed to acquire SecureWorks, a publicly-held company majority owned by Dell focused on Extended Detection and Response (XDR), for $859 million.[39] The acquisition was completed in February 2025,[40] and was closely followed by a layoff of 6% (or an estimated 400 people) from the combined workforce.[41]
In 2025, Sophos entered into a partnership with the French cybersecurity provider IMS Networks to integrate the Sophos Taegis XDR platform into IMS Networks' security operations centre (SOC).[42] Under the agreement, IMS Networks operates a detection and incident response service on a 24/7 basis from France, using the cloud-native Taegis platform, which originated from Sophos's acquisition of SecureWorks.[42]
