Rapid7 is buying Minerva Labs, the anti-evasion and ransomware prevention technology provider, for $38 million in cash and stock.

Rapid7 will further extend its managed threat detection capabilities with the ability to offer advanced ransomware prevention. These new capabilities will extend managed detection and response (MDR) across cloud resources, traditional infrastructure, and existing endpoint protection infrastructure. That will enable customers to further consolidate their security investments.

Jeremiah Dewey is senior vice president of managed services delivery at Rapid7.

Rapid7’s Jeremiah Dewey

“Driving efficiency and maximizing security investments is critical in order for organizations to stay ahead of increasingly evasive and creative attacks,” he said. “Today, our MDR customers benefit from our proprietary detection and response technology, a fully integrated, world-class team of 24×7 security engineers, and leading security data science to detect, assess and respond to emerging threats. With Minerva, we are further extending our MDR capabilities with more advanced anti-evasion and malware prevention and orchestration from the endpoint to the cloud, as well as providing seamless support of existing, leading endpoint protection infrastructure.”

What Rapid7 Gets from Minerva Labs Purchase

Minerva Labs was co-founded in 2014 by Eddy Bobritsky and Erez Breiman. It helps organizations mitigate the risks associated with ransomware. Minerva Labs’ technology provides multi-layer prevention. It neutralizes and prevents malicious activity. It also enables more agility to integrate with third-party endpoint protection solutions.

Bobritsky is also Minerva Labs’ CEO.

“We’ve worked tirelessly to create technology that combats ransomware and puts the power back in the hands of organizations,” he said. “We are excited to join Rapid7 to continue this journey and integrate our technology into Rapid7’s industry-leading MDR capabilities.”

Last month, Rapid7 announced it is partnering with the University of South Florida (USF) to create a cyber threat intelligence laboratory that will support interdisciplinary research efforts by faculty experts and students from four colleges and myriad disciplines.

This joint endeavor will accelerate new collaborative research efforts in cyber threat detection. In addition it will support an inclusive approach to diverse talent development in cybersecurity.

It will also provide USF students the opportunity for hands-on learning and cybersecurity skills development.