9 Spectacular Cloud Computing Fails

Microsoft's acquisition spree continues with the reported purchase of Israeli cloud access security specialist Adallom, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Israeli business publication Globes.

While neither company has commented on the supposed acquisition, the Journal quoted two sources familiar with the situation acknowledging Microsoft had signed a letter of intent for $320 million to purchase the company, making it Microsoft's largest-ever acquisition in Israel.

"According to the people familiar with the matter, Adallom, which employs 90 people world-wide, will continue to operate from Israel, building up Microsoft's cybersecurity-focused operations in the country," the Journal article stated.

In July, Adallom announced additional integration with security specialist Check Point's Threat Emulation sandboxing capabilities to detect new exploits, zero-day vulnerabilities, and targeted advanced persistent threats in any content stored in cloud applications.

The company has also partnered with popular Web-based file-sharing service Dropbox for its business application, which allows Dropbox administrators to govern application usage, address compliance mandates, enable data security, and protect users from threats in real-time.

The July 20 acquisition of Adallom is the latest in a string of purchases of Israeli tech companies by Microsoft over the course of the last several months. Many of these buys have focused on enhancing the security of Microsoft's products, especially cloud-based technologies.

It should come as no surprise that Microsoft is now even more interested in protecting its cloud products, especially after the company laid out its vision for the next year, which places most of the emphasis on cloud computing, as well as Windows 10, which is slated for release on July 29.

These acquisitions began with security specialist Aorato in 2014.

Aorato's technology uses machine learning to detect suspicious activity on a company's network by understanding what normal behavior is, and then identifying anomalies so that a company can see suspicious behavior and take appropriate measures to help protect it.

The key to Aorato's approach is the Organizational Security Graph, a view of all of the people and machines accessing an organization's Windows Server Active Directory (AD).

The platform is used by a wide variety of organizations to store user identities and administer access to critical business applications and systems.

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Earlier this year, Microsoft snapped up Equivio, a provider of machine learning technologies for e-discovery and information governance.

Equivio's products apply machine learning to help business sift through data, enabling users to explore large, unstructured sets of data and quickly find what is relevant.

The company's software uses advanced text analytics to perform multidimensional analyses of data collections, intelligently sorting documents into themes, grouping near-duplicates, and isolating unique data.

A month later Microsoft bought N-trig, the Israeli company that thought up the pen that accompanies the Surface Pro 3 tablet.

In the age of the Internet of Things, data security has become a major focus point, as consumers and businesses express desire for access to information but face mounting security concerns.

According to a new survey from MasterCard, a majority (77%) of the 1,000 consumers surveyed said they are anxious about their financial information and social security numbers being stolen or compromised.

This fear runs so deep that consumers are less concerned about having their e-mail hacked (62%) or their home robbed (59%).