RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Microsoft, which has a growing presence in the Triangle and North Carolina, says it is boosting efforts to fight cybercrime by acquiring security startup RiskIQ.

“Organizations are increasingly using the cloud to reimagine every facet of their business. Hybrid work has accelerated this digital transformation, and customers are challenged with the increasing sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks. Today, Microsoft is announcing that we have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire RiskIQ, a leader in global threat intelligence and attack surface management, to help our shared customers build a more comprehensive view of the global threats to their businesses, better understand vulnerable internet-facing assets, and build world-class threat intelligence,” wrote Eric Doerr, vice president for Cloud Security, in a blog post.

“As organizations pursue this digital transformation and embrace the concept of Zero Trust, their applications, infrastructure, and even IoT applications are increasingly running across multiple clouds and hybrid cloud environments. Effectively the internet is becoming their new network, and it’s increasingly critical to understand the full scope of their assets to reduce their attack surface.

“RiskIQ helps customers discover and assess the security of their entire enterprise attack surface—in the Microsoft cloud, AWS, other clouds, on-premises, and from their supply chain. With more than a decade of experience scanning and analyzing the internet, RiskIQ can help enterprises identify and remediate vulnerable assets before an attacker can capitalize on them.”

Bloomberg had reported a possible deal over the weekend with a selling price of $500 million.

RiskIQ, launched in 2009, is based in San Francisco and has backing from investors Battery Ventures and MassMutual Ventures, among others.

“The deal could help Microsoft expand its security business, which is growing faster than other segments,” CNBC reported. “In January, Microsoft said it derived more than $10 billion in security revenue in the past 12 months, up more than 40% year over year.”