Recorded Future closes acquisition of malware analysis firm Hatching

In a move to broaden its portfolio of cybersecurity products, Boston-based threat intelligence collection and analysis firm Recorded Future has reached an agreement to purchase Dutch malware analysis company Hatching

Recorded Future offers a wide range of different types of intelligence on digital threats, using proprietary predictive analytics to track public documents, potentially compromised credentials, and dark web traffic for insights into potential threats to client organizations. The addition of Hatching—whose specialty is malware sandboxing and analysis—broadens the company’s portfolio substantially.

Christopher Ahlberg, CEO and co-founder of Recorded Future, said in a statement that automated malware analysis of the type provided by Hatching will be a critical new arrow in his company’s quiver.

“Our clients will now have an intelligence advantage against malware exploits, one of the most pervasive threats facing every organization,” he said.

Part of the idea behind this acquisition, according to Forrester Research principal analyst Brian Wrozek, is to offer something closer to one-stop shopping for organizations seeking an improved security profile. Hatching’s analysis platform is already broadly useful to many different kinds of security professionals, including forensics analysts, security engineers and incident responders, and combining it with Recorded Future’s existing products offers even more options for organizations attempting to prevent future attacks or recover from past ones.

“[The deal] allows Recorded Future to further expand their threat intelligence portfolio appealing to customers who are looking to reduce their overall vendor footprint without sacrificing capabilities,” Wrozek said. “This can be a standalone service offering but the intelligence gained from analyzing malware can be used to further enhance their other offerings by adding more context to threats and threat actors.”

Recorded Future confirmed that Hatching would continue to be offered as a standalone service for existing customers, so their use of the platform is unlikely to be affected in the short term.

Longer-term, however, standalone customers might have some concerns, according to Wrozek. While the possibility of adding additional services is likely to please some, Hatching becoming part of a larger company with different product lines could, potentially, pose an issue.

“There is the potential that this specialized malware analysis solution could receive less focus in the future at the expense of the broader portfolio,” he said.

Terms of the Hatching purchase were not disclosed. It’s Recorded Future’s third since March 2021. That month saw the company buy up fraud analytics provider Gemini Advisory, for $52 million, and Recorded Future also acquired attack surface monitoring firm SecurityTrails in January of this year.