What does the Bit9 and Carbon Black merger mean for businesses?

Bit9 recently merged with Carbon Black, a move that, in the newly-formed company's words, makes it the only one capable of detecting advanced threats on endpoints and servers to provide incident responses in seconds.

It's a bold claim, and one that it plans to achieve by combining Bit9's endpoint/server advanced threat prevention solution with Carbon Black's incident response solution to let organisations respond to incidents in real time.

Bit9 has raised $38.25 million to fuel the combined companies' growth. TechRadar Pro spoke to Mike Viscuso, chief strategy officer of Bit9 and former CEO of Carbon Black, to find out more.

TechRadar Pro: What does the merger mean for enterprises?

Mike Viscuso: Bit9 + Carbon Black means that enterprises will, for the first time, have the ability to prevent, detect and respond to advanced threats using a single product. By merging our organizations and our technologies, we're empowering enterprises with the most complete solution for advanced threat protection on the market – one that accounts for EVERY step in the security lifecycle.

TRP: What is the overall vision/goal for Bit9 and Carbon Black? What does Bit9 and Carbon Black want to achieve in next 10 years?

MV: The Endpoint Threat Detection and Response (ETDR) market is moving at a lightning-fast pace right now, which is great news for organizations looking to better protect themselves. With this merger, we've positioned ourselves as a leader in front of the market.

The recent $38.25M investment in our combined company enables us to accelerate our technology roadmap so we are consistently delivering the most advanced and comprehensive solution available.

TRP: What are the biggest challenges in making this merger work?

MV: One of the biggest challenges we've both faced, independently, has been in converting some of the nonbelievers still out there. Unfortunately, there are still some organizations that have yet to adapt an evolved security posture – one that extends beyond traditional antivirus and accepts the inevitability of a data breach.

Since the synergy of our combined team has been electric thus far, we have no doubt our efforts to better educate the market about prevention, detection and response will mean a more evolved security posture for the entire market.

Adequately educating the market is a challenge we are excited to meet because it's critical that organizations realize that antivirus cannot protect them and their customers against today's advanced threats, including zero-day and targeted attacks.

TRP: What will Bit9 look like once the merger is complete?

MV: As the leader in advanced threat protection for endpoints are servers, Bit9 will continue to grow our technology and our people to reflect that position. In adding the full Carbon Black team to the mix we are increasing our "offensive security" DNA an order an magnitude and vastly enhancing the detection and response capabilities in our technology.

TRP: Do you see a gap widening between traditional defences such as anti-virus and advanced threat protection?

MV: Absolutely. Simply put, traditional antivirus no longer cuts it. Bit9 + Carbon Black offers the industry its most complete solution for advanced threat protection for endpoints and servers.

We're helping organizations protect themselves from advanced threats in two critical ways: by reducing their attack surface through new signature-less forms of prevention, and rapidly detecting and responding to threats.

We do this by leveraging the powerful combination of Carbon Black's lightweight endpoint sensor, which can be rapidly deployed with no configuration to deliver "incident response in seconds," and Bit9's industry-leading prevention technologies to continuously monitor and record all activity on endpoints and servers and stop cyber threats that evade traditional security defenses.

TRP: How did you raise the $38.25 million and how will it be used to drive the companies' growth?