Darktrace, a cybersecurity AI vendor based in Cambridge, England, has recently acquired Pittsburgh-area Mira Security, a network traffic visibility startup. The primary goal of this acquisition is to significantly enhance Darktrace’s capabilities in gaining insights from and decrypting encrypted network traffic. This is especially crucial for organizations operating in highly regulated sectors such as financial services, government, and critical infrastructure, where the ability to analyze plaintext traffic is often a compliance requirement. By integrating Mira Security’s in-line decryption technology, Darktrace aims to provide its customers with deeper and more comprehensive visibility across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, ultimately improving their security posture.
The acquisition is set to bring substantial benefits through the integration of Mira Security’s team and technology.
Mira Security, founded in 2020 and led by Niel Viljoen, who also heads Netronome, brings deep expertise in building high-performance software and firmware for network acceleration. This will enable Darktrace to handle higher ingestion capacities, support 100 Gbps interfaces, and enhance strategic deployments. The combined organization will be able to close the “encrypted data blind spot” without negatively impacting network performance or requiring complex re-architecting, providing a seamless and efficient solution for customers dealing with encrypted traffic.
This acquisition follows closely on the heels of a recently announced partnership between Darktrace and Mira Security. Just a month prior, the two companies formalized a collaboration to allow organizations with compliance obligations to decrypt and analyze network traffic in its plaintext form. This partnership had already begun to reduce blind spots, enable more in-depth investigation of detections, and simplify traffic management by requiring only one feed of TLS-formatted plaintext from Mira to Darktrace.
The full acquisition solidifies this collaboration, ensuring a deeper integration of their technologies and a unified approach to addressing the challenges of encrypted network visibility.
The strategic importance of the Mira Security acquisition is further highlighted by Darktrace’s recent history of strategic growth through mergers and acquisitions. This purchase comes just six months after Darktrace acquired Cado Security, a cloud forensics and automation startup, to enhance security in multi-cloud environments. Darktrace’s first acquisition was Cybersprint in February 2022, aimed at improving attack surface management. These successive acquisitions demonstrate Darktrace’s commitment to expanding its product offerings and strengthening its market position by integrating specialized technologies that complement its core AI-driven cybersecurity solutions.
Darktrace’s aggressive acquisition strategy is supported by its recent privatization by Thoma Bravo in October 2024 for $5.32 billion. Being a private entity allows Darktrace to accelerate its organic growth and pursue further acquisitions more effectively, leveraging the private equity firm’s operational expertise. This move to enhance its capabilities in handling encrypted traffic through the Mira Security acquisition aligns with Darktrace’s broader goal of providing cutting-edge, AI-powered solutions that can detect anomalies and contain sophisticated threats at speed and scale in increasingly complex network environments.
Reference:
