Microsoft confirms acquisition of Israeli security startup Aorato

The Wall Street Journal noted back in July that Microsoft was in talks to buy Aorato, and pegged the possible purchase price at $200 million. Aorato was founded in 2011 by Israeli Defense Forces veterans, the Journal said. The current management team includes several Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and a former Microsoft employee. The company’s core product is software that monitors access to enterprise IT systems. According to Microsoft’s press release about the acquisition, Aorato uses machine learning to detect suspicious activity on a company’s network. “Key to Aorato’s approach is the Organizational Security Graph, a living, continuously-updated view of all of the people and machines accessing an organization’s Windows Server Active Directory (AD),” Microsoft officials said in the release. I’ve heard from one of my sources that Microsoft may end up making Aorato part of Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite of technologies at some point. Microsoft’s release says that Aorato’s technology should “complement similar capabilities that we have developed for Azure Active Directory, our cloud-based identity and access management solution.”