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The company focuses on Microsoft’s active directory services activities by observing the network traffic between active directory servers and the active network users and devices.
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Microsoft is currently conducting negotiations to acquire, for $200 million, Israeli cyber security startup Aorato, which develops technology to protect firms’ databases and systems.
Aorato offers to protect an organization and its Active Directory by automatically learning, profiling and predicting entity behavior. The company’s Directory Services Application Firewall (DAF) protects Active Directory and leverages its central role in the network, to secure organizations from advanced targeted attacks.
The company focuses on Microsoft’s active directory services activities by observing the network traffic between active directory servers and the active network users and devices.
DAF detects suspicious activities through learning, profiling and predicting entities’ behaviors. This is done by observing the patterns of all authorized users on a system, so that if one’s access codes are used by a hacker, the software will be able to detect any unusual patterns and immediately discover the threat. This is a non-intrusive solution, which is transparent to Active Directory.
As the company states, “It is not enough anymore to track only privileged accounts to protect the organization against advanced attacks. DAF introduces a new approach. DAF detects suspicious activities through learning, profiling and predicting entities’ behaviors.”
Only two weeks ago Aoroto revealed that it had been accepted into Microsoft’s Active Protections Program, enabling it to receive vulnerability information in advance of Microsoft’s security update releases.
The news comes after this week’s announcement by Aorato that it had discovered a critical design flaw in Microsoft’s Active Directory, which is widely used to provide network access.
Tal Be’ery, Vice President of Research at Aorato, stated that, “The dire consequences we are discussing–that an attacker can change the password–was definitely not known.”
He also pointed out that 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Active Directory making the problem “highly sensitive.”
Just this past January, the company announced that it had raised $10 million in investments from Accel Partners, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Glilot Capital Partners , and private investors Mickey Boodaei, a co-founder of Imperva Inc. and Rakesh Loonkar.
Based in Herzlya, Aorato was founded at the end of 2011 by three veterans of the Israel Defense Forces’ cyber security unit: the CEO is Idan Plotnik, his brother, Ohad Plotnik, is VP of professional services, and Michael Dolinsk is VP R&D.
The three believe that “At the core of Aorato’s founding was the acknowledgement that Active Directory is exposed – by default and by design, the consequence of which is that the entire organization is at risk.”