- Security, performance, and reliability company Cloudflare recently announced it is buying S2 Systems Corporation. These are the details about the deal.
Cloudflare — a security, performance, and reliability company known for building a better Internet — recently announced it is buying S2 Systems Corporation (S2). S2 is a company that has developed patented browser isolation technology to make everyday web browsing safer and faster.
After the acquisition is completed, Cloudflare is expecting to add S2’s technology to Cloudflare Gateway (part of Cloudflare for Teams). Cloudflare Gateway is a new security suite that is designed to protect corporate employees and data without sacrificing performance.
S2 has developed browser isolation technology that executes browser code on cloud servers rather than on a user’s device. And the solution keeps security threats away from the device, only sending rendering instructions to the viewer’s browser. Plus users navigate the Internet without adding risk posed by threats across the public Internet.
Existing solutions generally rely on streaming video of web content (pixel streaming) or attempting to sanitize known malicious content (DOM reconstruction) which forces users to make a tradeoff between security and performance. And S2’s approach is designed to avoid this tradeoff. Cloudflare is expecting that S2’s technology will be able to protect endpoints from zero-day vulnerabilities without sacrificing speed, website compatibility, or user experience.
“The experienced team at S2 Systems has built an advanced technology that we believe surpasses other browser isolation technologies,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “When we met their team and evaluated the technology they’ve built, we knew that they had the missing piece we needed to support our Gateway product and build out our new Cloudflare for Teams capabilities. We can’t wait to integrate their stellar team within Cloudflare and utilize their remarkable technology in our platform as we continue to help build a better Internet.”
S2 Systems co-founder Darren Remington pointed out that Cloudflare’s team is “nimble and mission-led.” And he believes that there were great synergies across their teams and alignment across their ambitions and goals.
“Their ability to run code at the edge—the way it should be run—is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and we’re excited to join our technology with their existing platform,” added Remington.
S2 Systems co-founder and CEO David Harnett said that he is joining the Cloudflare team.
“We truly feel that we can make a difference across the whole Internet, by making it faster, better, and safer for all users,” stated Harnett.
Kernel Labs CEO/founder Amit Mital pointed out that S2’s technology is an innovative approach that changes the fundamental calculus for remote browser isolation.
“When combined with the global Cloudflare network and edge compute capabilities of Cloudflare Workers, it represents a revolution of the browser and how we securely interact with the web,” noted Mital.
Teleion Consulting managing partner Ryan Janzen pointed out that the S2 cloud browser “checks every box. It is not only transparent but faster than regular browsing.”
The S2 founding team members are former senior Microsoft employees and have strong backgrounds in enterprise technology.
