Technology
Sophos Acquires Braintrace to Provide Next Generation Cybersecurity
By Adedapo Adesanya
Sophos, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity, has announced the acquisition of Braintrace to manage cyber threats and provide responses to its customers.
This further enhances Sophos’ Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem with Braintrace’s proprietary Network Detection and Response (NDR) technology.
Braintrace’s NDR provides deep visibility into network traffic patterns, including encrypted traffic, without the need for Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) decryption. Located in Salt Lake City, Utah, Braintrace launched in 2016 and is privately held.
As part of the acquisition, Braintrace’s developers, data scientists and security analysts have joined Sophos’ global Managed Threat Response (MTR) and Rapid Response teams.
Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response services business has expanded rapidly, establishing Sophos as one of the largest and fastest-growing MDR providers in the world, with more than 5,000 active customers.
Braintrace’s NDR technology will support Sophos’ MTR and Rapid Response analysts and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) customers through integration into the Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which underpins all Sophos products and services.
The Braintrace technology will also serve as the launchpad to collect and forward third-party event data from firewalls, proxies, virtual private networks (VPNs), and other sources.
These additional layers of visibility and event ingestion will significantly improve threat detection, threat hunting and response to suspicious activity.
Speaking on the acquisition, Mrs Joe Levy, chief technology officer, Sophos said, “You can’t protect what you don’t know is there, and businesses of all sizes often miscalculate their assets and attack surfaces, both on-premises and in the cloud. Attackers take advantage of this, often going after weakly protected assets as a means of initial access.
“Defenders benefit from an ‘air traffic control system’ that sees all network activity, reveals unknown and unprotected assets, and exposes evasive malware more reliably than Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS).”
“We’re particularly excited that Braintrace built this technology specifically to provide better security outcomes to their Managed Detection and Response (MDR) customers.
“It’s hard to beat the effectiveness of solutions built by teams of skilled practitioners and developers to solve real-world cybersecurity problems,” he added.
Sophos will deploy Braintrace’s NDR technology as a virtual machine, fed from traditional observability points such as a Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) port or a network Test Access Point (TAP) to inspect both north-south traffic at boundaries or east-west traffic within networks.
These deployments help discover threats inside any type of network, including those that remain encrypted, serving as a complement to the decryption capabilities of Sophos Firewall.
The technology’s packet and flow engine feed a variety of machine learning models trained to detect suspicious or malicious network patterns, such as connections to Command and Control (C2) servers, lateral movement and communications with suspicious domains.
Since Braintrace built its NDR technology specifically for predictive, passive monitoring, its engine also provides intelligent network packet capture that IT security administrators and threat hunters can use as supporting evidence during investigations. The novel NDR analysis and prediction technique is patent pending.
On his part, Mr Bret Laughlin, CEO and co-founder of Braintrace said, “NDR is critical to successful threat hunting. Braintrace’s competitive differentiation is its unique NDR technology that our MDR analysts leveraged for finding, interrupting and remediating cyberattacks.
“With our own NDR technology, the team responds faster and more accurately because of the real-time, automated visibility and threat verification they have into encrypted traffic.
“We built Braintrace’s NDR technology from the ground up for detection and now, with Sophos, it will fit into a complete system to provide cross-product detection and response across a multi-vendor ecosystem.”
Braintrace’s NDR technology is a key component for defending against cyberattacks today and in the future.
Sophos research demonstrates how adversaries aggressively and constantly change tactics to evade detection and execute their attacks.
Braintrace’s technology helps uncover malicious C2 traffic from malware, such as ColbaltStrike, BazaLoader and TrickBot, as well as zero-days, that could lead to ransomware and other attacks. This visibility allows threat hunters and analysts to pre-empt any potential ransomware attack, including recent strikes by REvil and DarkSide.
Sophos plans to introduce Braintrace’s NDR technology for MTR and XDR in the first half of 2022.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) have introduced a new regulatory requirement mandating prior approval for significant changes in the ownership structure of telecommunications companies operating in Nigeria.
This was contained in a statement jointly signed by the Director of Public Affairs at the NCC, Mrs Nnenna Ukoha and Head of Public Affairs at the Corporate Affairs Commission, Mr Rasheed Mahe.
According to a joint press release issued by the two agencies, the directive, which takes immediate effect, requires all licensed telecom operators seeking to transfer ownership or control of shares amounting to 10 per cent or more of their total share capital to first obtain a Letter of No Objection from the NCC before such transactions can be registered by the CAC.
The statement reads in part, “The directive, which takes immediate effect, requires all licensed communications companies seeking to transfer ownership or control of shares amounting to 10 per cent or more of their total share capital to obtain a Letter of No Objection from the NCC before such transactions can be registered with the CAC.
“The requirement is in line with the provisions of Section 90 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003, Regulation 28(2) of the Competition Practices Regulations 2007, and Regulation 42 of the Licensing Regulations 2019, which empower the NCC to monitor transactions involving licensees and ensure fair competition within the sector.
“Under the new arrangement, the CAC will only process and register requests for changes in shareholding structures of telecommunications companies where the transaction involves 10 per cent or more of the company’s shares and is accompanied by evidence of prior approval from the NCC.
“According to the two regulatory agencies, the measure is aimed at strengthening oversight of significant ownership changes, preventing anti-competitive practices, and preserving a fair and competitive communications market. It is also expected to enhance transparency, boost investor confidence, provide greater regulatory certainty, and support the long-term stability and sustainability of Nigeria’s telecommunications industry.
The NCC and CAC reaffirmed their commitment to fostering a transparent, stable, and investor-friendly business environment. Both agencies pledged continued collaboration to promote fair market practices, strengthen regulatory compliance, and ensure the orderly development of Nigeria’s communications sector.”
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The relevant stakeholders have been urged to take urgent action to curb the rising sophistication of cyber threats, which could undermine business sustainability and profitability.
This call was made by the Information Security Society of Africa – Nigeria (ISSAN) during its monthly meeting held in collaboration with MAXUT Consulting.
The group noted that identity theft, mobile fraud, ransomware, and social engineering attacks are threats to organisations, especially those who may struggle to protect information assets, maintain operational resilience, and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
The president of ISSAN, Mr David Isiavwe, who doubles as the Executive Director for Risk Management at Nova Bank, stressed that cybercriminals are deploying increasingly sophisticated attack methods targeting individuals, businesses, critical national infrastructure, and strategic assets.
Among the threats highlighted were identity theft, Business Email Compromise (BEC), phishing, ransomware, WhatsApp account hijacking, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, payment card fraud, cryptocurrency-related attacks, and other forms of social engineering.
According to him, the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks mean cybersecurity can no longer be viewed solely as an IT issue but as a critical business and national security priority.
To address these challenges, he urged organisations to adopt proactive risk management practices, implement continuous monitoring systems, promptly address vulnerabilities, and invest in regular cybersecurity awareness programmes for employees and customers.
Also, the importance of leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and automation to enhance threat detection and response capabilities was emphasised.
“No organisation can successfully confront today’s cyber threats in isolation. Information sharing, collaboration, and collective vigilance remain essential to protecting our digital ecosystem and safeguarding public trust,” the ISSAN leader said at the event, which featured a technical presentation titled, Confronting the New Mobile Threat Landscape: Beyond User Authentication.
ISSAN reaffirmed its commitment to promoting cybersecurity awareness, capacity building, information sharing, and industry collaboration to strengthen Nigeria’s cyber resilience and support a secure digital economy.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A designed-in-house server known as Nathu La has been launched by a global technology company, Zoho Corporation.
Nathu La is engineered with hardware-rooted security at every layer of the stack. Its indigenous IP-driven approach reduces dependency on external entities for security audits, firmware updates, and licensing continuity.
The solution aligns with open-source software principles and reflects Zoho’s broader commitment to building sustainable, secure, and scalable digital infrastructure. It also supports the growing global focus on digital sovereignty, local innovation ecosystems, and high-performance computing capabilities.
The platform was introduced by the company as part of a pivotal step in its journey towards building its full technology stack, from the hardware layer to software applications.
With Nathu La, Zoho has achieved equivalent performance with 12-18 per cent lower power consumption and 20-30 per cent lower total cost of ownership (TCO), thereby reducing inference costs.
The Nathu La server, comprising Intel® Xeon® 6 processors, was developed collaboratively with Intel, leveraging their enablement capabilities and technical expertise.
The design philosophy behind Nathu La is rooted in the Open Compute Project (OCP), emphasising modularity, thermal efficiency, and ease of maintenance. This enables Zoho’s data centres to significantly reduce total cost of ownership and power consumption.
Zoho plans to host its applications on the Nathu La server platform, enabling the company to optimise the full software-hardware stack for its specific workloads, reduce costs, improve performance, and strengthen data governance for its global customers. This will also help bring down inference costs for Zoho’s AI usage.
The Nathu La server motherboard and chassis platform is the result of five years of R&D across hardware, firmware, and systems management. Based on Intel® Xeon® 6 Processors, the server is designed to optimise performance for virtualisation (VM), High Performance Computing (HPC), AI inference, and storage applications. This results in improved performance of Zoho applications for end users.
The server features customised power delivery subsystems, an in-house DC-SCM (Data Centre Secure Control Module) design, and modular chassis options compatible with diverse end-user environments, offering flexibility across deployment types.
All modular components – including the DC-SCM and NIC (Network Interface Card) – were designed in-house by Zoho’s hardware engineering team and assembled through electronics manufacturing partners, enabling tighter integration and quality control across the platform. Over five patents have been filed covering advanced thermal management and cost-optimised server architecture designs.
“Zoho Corporation has invested in building its own technology stack from the ground up over the last three decades. The Nathu La server launch is in line with that goal.
“With our strategy of using contextual, right-sized models, running on our own platform, on our own servers, in our own data centres, we are compounding the benefits accrued from owning and operating our entire technology stack. This ensures that our solutions are more sustainable and accessible for businesses.
“These long-term R&D investments we are making at every layer of the stack are aimed at delivering customer value,” the Country Head for Zoho Nigeria, Mr Kehinde Ogundare, stated.
In 2020, Zoho established a small R&D team in Nagpur, a Tier 2 town in India, focused on projects such as server design and systems engineering.
Members of the Nathu La R&D team include hires from SETU – short for Students’ Engagement for Transformative Upskilling – an initiative designed to build a pipeline of industry-ready engineers, with a focus on advanced learning in Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM).
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