Rapid7 has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Divvy Cloud Corporation, a cloud security posture management company, for US$145 million.

The acquisition, which is to be paid in cash and stock, is expected to close during the second quarter of 2020.

"We are thrilled to welcome DivvyCloud, its customers, and the entire DivvyCloud team to the Rapid7 family," says Rapid7 chairman and chief executive officer Corey Thomas.

"With the acceleration of cloud adoption introducing new enterprise risk areas, we're excited to bring Security and DevOps teams together with DivvyCloud's best-of-breed compliance, risk management and governance for multi-cloud and container environments, while also integrating it with our Insight Cloud platform to create enduring customer value."

Adoption of cloud services is reaching record heights as remote working becomes the new norm, increasing the demand for collaboration tools, remote access services and video streaming platforms, among many other services.

But increased interaction with cloud services calls for a bolstered security and DevOps profile to manage the governance of organisations' cloud and container environments, says Rapid7.

The acquisition of DivvyCloud's platform means Rapid7 customers will have the ability to innovate more securely, move out of data centers and into the cloud, and make infrastructure accessible and manageable, according to the company.

"Joining forces with Rapid7 is a natural next step," says DivvyCloud co-founder and chief executive officer Brian Johnson.

"Their commitment to customers, employees, and company culture is well-aligned with the values that have made DivvyCloud so successful.

“With the combined expertise of both Rapid7 and DivvyCloud, we are even better positioned to help enterprises accelerate innovation using cloud and containers without the loss of control."

DivvyCloud enables deep visibility, combined with automated prevention and real-time remediation of risk to deliver continuous security and compliance for cloud environments, including support for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud and Kubernetes.

Using DivvyCloud, customers can protect cloud and container environments from misconfiguration, policy violations, external and internal threats, and identity and access management challenges.

"Security teams are constantly challenged with understanding and effectively managing the risk and security for cloud environments at DevOps speeds," says Rapid7 chief innovation officer Lee Weiner.

"DivvyCloud's technology, team, and market leadership in the cloud security space will enable Rapid7 to better serve its customers' needs by helping them innovate more securely, and provide a robust set of compliance and remediation paths for those with modern cloud infrastructure."