Earlier this month, on the eve of its annual Perform customer conference, Dynatrace announced the definitive acquisition of Runecast, an AI-powered security and compliance solutions provider, including Cloud Security Posture Management. The deal is expected to close by March 31, 2024, the end of Dynatrace’s fiscal year.
The acquisition allows Dynatrace to integrate Runecast’s AI-driven cybersecurity and compliance capabilities into its observability platform, enhancing customers’ ability to proactively manage risks, compliance violations, and security threats in hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems through AI-driven, automated, real-time assessments.
Who is Runecast?
Runecast builds advanced technology for security compliance, vulnerability assessment, and configuration management of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Its solutions are designed to deliver real-time, automated, and actionable insights to help organizations maintain security and compliance standards.
The company’s AI engine is equipped with over 34,000 policy rules for security and compliance checks, significantly higher than the industry standard of around 2,000 rules. Its extensive rule set allows for more detailed and thorough assessments.
Runecast also supports automated remediation of security findings, which is critical for maintaining continuous compliance and addressing issues as they arise without the need for manual intervention.
With a strong emphasis on CSPM, Runecast helps organizations automate vulnerability assessment and configuration drift management. It also conducts continuous audits to ensure best practices and adherence to common security standards.
Its products are easy to deploy and integrate, offering out-of-the-box integrations with VMware, Linux, OpenStack, and Microsoft Windows, along with the top three leading cloud providers. Its products also facilitate easy integration with existing tooling, with a REST API supplementing existing integrations with ServiceNow, Jira, and VMware vSphere clients.
These differentiators are particularly appealing in an era when cloud-native technologies have increased security complexity, and organizations are looking for integrated solutions that can provide clear visibility and control over their security posture.
Analyst
Dynatrace’s acquisition of Runecast is a strategic consolidation within the cloud security landscape, reflecting the growing need for integrated solutions in observability and security. This is a clear signal that the market is rapidly evolving towards platforms offering real-time, AI-driven insights to manage cloud security risks and compliance proactively.
The observability market has seen an ongoing trend towards consolidation of functionality. It makes sense that an observability platform, which is the source of truth for enterprise IT infrastructure, allows IT administrators to act on those observations. Integrating AI allows for the platform to make recommendations. Integrating capabilities from Runecast takes things a step further.
Dynatrace vice president of product management Bob Wambach told me in a video we recorded together earlier this year that customers demand consolidation. Providing a robust set of related capabilities from a unified management plane simply makes the job of an IT practitioner easier; anything that eases the pain of managing infrastructure is goodness.
Integrating Runecast’s technology with Dynatrace’s Davis AI and AutomationEngine will enable an unprecedented level of automated remediation of security findings. Runecast’s strong engineering team and cultural alignment complement this synergy, promising to accelerate Dynatrace’s fastest-growing security business to new heights.
This acquisition will empower Dynatrace to proactively tackle the risks of misconfigurations and compliance violations within hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems through automated, real-time vulnerability assessments.
The integration of Runecast technology into Dynatrace’s platform addresses a critical gap in the market—providing customers with the unified, context-rich approach they require to safeguard workloads and applications across complex multi-cloud environments. The deal will strengthen Dynatrace’s cloud-native application security anad compliance capabilities, offering customers an enhanced toolset for threat detection and incident response.
Given the customer demand for more consolidated observability platforms, it’s not a surprise that Dynatrace isn’t alone in integrating cybersecurity features. Datadog today delivers a basic set of CSPM capabilities. At the same time, the upcoming acquisition of Splunk will give Cisco the building blocks required to build a capable consolidated solution. However, Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk isn’t expected to close until late this year, so any resulting integrations are still far off.
Dynatrace is on the path toward cementing its differentiation through contextual observability and security analytics. The addition of Runecast’s technology will bolster Dynatrace’s runtime vulnerability analytics and protection, ensuring continuous audit readiness—a vital capability that can significantly enhance the company’s competitive edge.
