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Sophos Acquires Braintrace to Boost Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem
Sophos, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity, today announced that it has acquired Braintrace, further enhancing Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem with Braintrace’s proprietary Network Detection and Response (NDR) technology.
Braintrace’s NDR provides deep visibility into network traffic patterns, including encrypted traffic, without the need for Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) decryption.
Located in Salt Lake City, Utah, Braintrace launched in 2016 and is privately held.
As part of the acquisition, Braintrace’s developers, data scientists and security analysts have joined Sophos’ global Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Rapid Response teams.
Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response services business has expanded rapidly, establishing Sophos as one of the largest and fastest-growing MDR providers in the world, with more than 5,000 active customers.
Braintrace’s NDR technology will support Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response analysts and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) customers through integration into the Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all Sophos products and services.
The Braintrace technology will also serve as the launchpad to collect and forward third-party event data from firewalls, proxies, virtual private networks (VPNs), and other sources.
These additional layers of visibility and event ingestion will significantly improve threat detection, threat hunting and response to suspicious activity.
Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos
“You can’t protect what you don’t know is there, and businesses of all sizes often miscalculate their assets and attack surface, both on-premises and in the cloud. Attackers take advantage of this, often going after weakly protected assets as a means of initial access. Defenders benefit from an ‘air traffic control system’ that sees all network activity, reveals unknown and unprotected assets, and exposes evasive malware more reliably than Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS),” said Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos. “We’re particularly excited that Braintrace built this technology specifically to provide better security outcomes to their Managed Detection and Response (MDR) customers. It’s hard to beat the effectiveness of solutions built by teams of skilled practitioners and developers to solve real world cybersecurity problems.”
Sophos will deploy Braintrace’s NDR technology as a virtual machine, fed from traditional observability points such as a Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) port or a network Test Access Point (TAP) to inspect both north-south traffic at boundaries or east-west traffic within networks.
These deployments help discover threats inside any type of network, including those that remain encrypted, serving as a complement to the decryption capabilities of Sophos Firewall.
The technology’s packet and flow engine feeds a variety of machine learning models trained to detect suspicious or malicious network patterns, such as connections to Command and Control (C2) servers, lateral movement and communications with suspicious domains.
Since Braintrace built its NDR technology specifically for predictive, passive monitoring, its engine also provides intelligent network packet capture that IT security administrators and threat hunters can use as supporting evidence during investigations. The novel NDR analysis and prediction technique is patent pending.
According to Gartner, “compared with traditional approaches, where malicious behavior is defined ahead of time in the form of prebuilt signatures and detection engines inspecting traffic looking for matches, NDR takes a different approach. Instead of only inspecting traffic against a list of known bad payloads or behaviors, NDR also focuses on looking for unknown patterns in the network traffic, calculating a probability as to whether that anomaly is malicious.”
Gartner further notes that, “the machine learning algorithms that are at the core of many NDR products help to detect anomalous traffic that is often missed by other detection techniques. The optional automated response capabilities help to offload some of the workload for incident responders. The threat hunting functionality provides valuable tools for incident responders.”
“NDR is critical to successful threat hunting. Braintrace’s competitive differentiation is its unique NDR technology that our MDR analysts leveraged for finding, interrupting and remediating cyberattacks,” said Bret Laughlin, CEO and co-founder of Braintrace. “With our own NDR technology, the team responds faster and more accurately because of the real-time, automated visibility and threat verification they have into encrypted traffic. We built Braintrace’s NDR technology from the ground up for detection and now, with Sophos, it will fit into a complete system to provide cross-product detection and response across a multi-vendor ecosystem.”
British cybersecurity software and hardware company Sophos Group plc’s Silicon Valley office in Santa Clara, California by Gettyimages
Braintrace’s NDR technology is a key component for defending against cyberattacks today and in the future. Sophos research demonstrates how adversaries aggressively and constantly change tactics to evade detection and execute their attacks.
Braintrace’s technology helps uncover malicious C2 traffic from malware, such as ColbaltStrike, BazaLoader and TrickBot, as well as zero-days, that could lead to ransomware and other attacks.
This visibility allows threat hunters and analysts to pre-empt any potential ransomware attack, including recent strikes by REvil and DarkSide.
Sophos plans to introduce Braintrace’s NDR technology for MTR and XDR in the first half of 2022.
Mart Networks, a leading cybersecurity distributor across Africa and the Middle East, has unveiled a specialized cybersecurity package tailored for fintech firms.
The solution, powered by Invinsense, Infopercept’s unified cybersecurity platform, aims to address the growing security needs of fintechs operating in highly regulated environments.
According to Moiz Maloo, Managing Director at Mart Networks, fintech companies face unique security challenges due to stringent regulatory requirements and increasing threats. “Most fintechs don’t have the luxury of multiple internal security teams or system integrators. With this focused offering, we’re providing an all-in-one platform with managed services built specifically for the fintech environment,” he said.
The offering integrates four key components: Invinsense XDR and Managed Detection & Response for real-time monitoring, Exposure Management for vulnerability detection, Security Compliance Management to support fintechs in meeting regulatory standards, and Cybersecurity Awareness Programs to empower teams against cyber threats.
Furthermore, the package includes deep application visibility, ensuring fintech-specific applications remain secure through Invinsense SIEM’s custom log ingestion capabilities. To reinforce protection, Infopercept’s engineering team will provide code-level fixes, patches, and infrastructure security enhancements.
With the rise of cloud-based fintech operations, the solution also incorporates full-stack cloud security, including API security, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), and Application Security Posture Management (ASPM).
Mart Networks’ move underscores the growing importance of cybersecurity in Africa’s fintech sector, as financial services become increasingly digital and susceptible to evolving cyber threats.
Equinix, Inc. the world’s digital infrastructure company™, has officially opened its latest data center expansion in Lagos. Called LG2.3, the facility will support Nigeria’s growing digital transformation efforts, providing state-of-the-art colocation and secure interconnection solutions which will empower businesses across the region.
It also signifies Equinix’s unwavering dedication to advancing Nigeria’s position in the global digital economy, reinforcing the company’s commitment to the region.
As part of the inauguration, Bruce Owen, President of EMEA at Equinix, along with other Equinix executives, led the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the newly expanded site. In addition to an official visit to the Governor of Lagos State, Equinix hosted an exclusive customer engagement event, bringing together key customers and partners from Nigeria’s business and technology sectors.
Attendees discussed shared successes and Equinix’s role in facilitating digital transformation, while also connecting directly with Bruce Owen for insights into how Equinix’s solutions drive innovation and business agility in the region.
Equinix executives also took part in a tree-planting ceremony, symbolising Equinix’s continued investment in sustainable initiatives across the globe and highlighting the company’s broader goal of reducing its carbon footprint while supporting greener practices across its operations worldwide.
Speaking about the expansion, Bruce Owen, President of EMEA at Equinix said “Nigeria is a crucial market for Equinix. Today’s opening is a clear demonstration of our continued commitments to invest and grow digital infrastructure that will benefit the many thousands of businesses in Nigeria and on the continent as a whole.
“I am deeply encouraged by the enthusiastic partnerships and innovations emerging from this dynamic region, which continue to inspire our commitment to Nigeria’s digital and sustainable future.”
Adding to this, Wole Abu, Managing Director of Equinix West Africa, highlighted the critical role of data centers in driving economic growth stating “Data centers continue to play a pivotal role in driving economic development in Nigeria, serving as critical infrastructure that supports digital transformation and economic growth.
“As governments and enterprises increasingly acknowledge their significance, global demand for data center capacity is poised to rise. While Africa’s demand for data solutions is still evolving compared to more mature markets, the continent is demonstrating strong potential for digital adoption and innovation.
“To meet this growing need, Equinix is actively advancing three major data center projects in Nigeria, with future expansion plans for Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa.”
Equinix remains steadfast in its mission to enable secure, scalable, and sustainable digital growth for economies across the world.
African women remain among the most digitally excluded globally, with smartphone affordability and digital literacy among the key barriers. New data from the 2025 GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report, launched recently, reveals a persistent global gender gap in mobile internet use across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
It further notes that literacy, digital skills, safety, and affordability of data also remain critical barriers. The report highlights that 885 million women across these regions still do not use mobile internet, with nearly 60% of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
While mobile internet is the primary way women in LMICs access the internet, offering critical lifelines to health, education, and financial services, the pace of female adoption has stalled, leaving 235 million fewer women than men connected.
Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at GSMA, highlighted that the gender gap had narrowed significantly between 2017 and 2020, but progress flatlined in recent years.
Although 2023 brought a slight improvement, restoring the gap to 15%, 2024 saw minimal change, with the gap settling at 14%.
The disparity is most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women are 29% less likely than men to use mobile internet.
“It’s disheartening that progress in reducing the mobile internet gender gap has stalled. The digital divide is driven by deep-rooted socio-economic and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
GSMA projects that closing the gender gap by 2030 could add $1.3 trillion to GDP across LMICs and deliver $230 billion in revenue to the mobile industry.
The report, funded by the UK FCDO, Sida, and the Gates Foundation, stresses the urgent need for targeted investment and policy action to bridge the digital divide and ensure that no woman is left offline.
“The mobile internet gender gap is not going to close on its own. It is driven by deep-rooted social, economic, and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
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