Oxford, U.K. – November 1, 2016 Sophos (LSE:SOPH) a global leader in network and endpoint security, today announced that it has acquired Barricade, a pioneering start-up with a powerful behavior-based analytics engine built on machine learning techniques. The team and technology from Barricade will strengthen Sophos’ synchronized security capabilities and its next-generation network and endpoint protection portfolio.

The developers and data scientists at Barricade have created a technology platform that can significantly enhance the ability to identify malicious or suspicious behavior. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, it extends the capabilities of rule-based detection technologies that will be increasingly challenged to keep up with the growth of sophisticated and complex attack patterns.

“Barricade has an impressive team of experts in data science and machine learning, and they share the Sophos vision for security made simple,” commented Bill Lucchini, senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Security Group at Sophos. “Delivering advanced protection to partners and customers without adding layers of complexity is at the core of our product strategy. Enterprise-grade security should be available to all organizations, and the acquisition of Barricade will accelerate the next phase of synchronized security innovation across the Sophos Central management platform.”

Sophos is recognized as a leader in endpoint and network protection with a growing set of next-generation technologies that leverage behavior-based analytics, such as the signatureless threat and exploit detection and root cause analysis recently released in Sophos Intercept X.

“We share the same development philosophy as Sophos – IT security can be complex but managing security products shouldn’t be,” said David Coallier, CEO at Barricade. “We are proud of the technology we have built and are pleased to join the team at Sophos focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning based security analytics. Driving the development of our technology into a comprehensive security solution that every IT professional can use presents us with the next phase in our exciting journey.”

Sophos will maintain the offices in Cork, Republic of Ireland. Barricade CEO David Coallier and the team of developers, data scientists and engineers will join the Sophos Cloud group that reports into general manager and senior vice president of the Sophos Cloud Security Group, Bill Lucchini.