Mimecast acquires Aware to 'revolutionise' human risk management

The acquisition marks the company's third in just one year

Human risk management vendor Mimecast today announced its acquisition of AI collaboration security platform Aware in a bid to "revolutionise" how organisations manage and mitigate human-centred security risks.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"The human attack surface has expanded significantly, and legacy tools weren't built to understand the complexity of messages, @mentions, emojis, and GIFs," said Mimecast CEO Marc van Zadelhoff.

"It creates more vulnerability in organisations' ecosystems, leading to security gaps, blind spots, and missing context, and exposing businesses to the risk of regulatory fines, reputational damage, and loss of valuable intellectual property."

Founded in 2003, Mimecast is an AI-powered, API-enabled connected human risk management platform, purpose-built to protect organisations from the spectrum of cyber threats.

The deal strengthens Mimecast's existing investments in AI models, providing security and compliance for customers' digital landscapes, including impersonation detection across collaboration channels such as Zoom, expansion of Business Email Compromise (BEC) capabilities by incorporating multiple large language models (LLMs), and enhancement of archiving capabilities to support multiple collaboration channels.

Jeff Schumann, CEO and co-founder of Aware, added: "We're thrilled to join Mimecast and help customers identify potential issues and opportunities within collaboration, and better protect the collaborative worksurface."

This acquisition follows Mimecast's State of Email Security Report 2024, with 38 per cent of respondents saying that the number of attacks due to collaboration tools is on the rise, while 75 per cent believe that the new threats posed by collaboration tools urgently need to be addressed.

Acquisition and Innovation

This deal is a testament to Mimecast's acquisitive fever this year, marking the vendor's third acquisition in just eight months.

Kicking off 2024 by buying Elevate Security in early January Mimecast kept up its momentum by snapping up Code42 in July.