Email Threat Protection , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Video

Kate Bolseth on Why Fortra Has Aggressively Sought Cyber M&A

Fortra has aggressively pursued acquisitions in the infrastructure protection, data protection, and digital risk and email protection markets to help customers improve their security posture.

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CEO Kate Bolseth said organizations told Fortra they had challenges both within segments such as security awareness and managed services as well as more broadly across different segments and wanted a more comprehensive security offering. Fortra has bundled its email security acquisitions together to create an offering that joins training and simulation with the ability to report bad emails in a managed service (see: Fortra: New Name, Renewed Cybersecurity Mission).

"We're developing common components and solutions," Bolseth said. "We want to drive better security outcomes and lower the burden associated with it. And from an engineering perspective, we want to make sure we're doing things once and leveraging it across the entire portfolio. We're therefore able to focus on innovation in each of the individual solutions versus doing things more than once."

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Bolseth also discussed:

• How organizations most frequently consume Fortra's security technology;
• Whether Fortra plans to continue at its recent pace of cyber acquisitions;
• Lessons learned from the GoAnywhere file transfer software vulnerability.

Bolseth joined Fortra in October 2015 and was responsible for setting strategy and overseeing execution of all operational functions until her July 2019 appointment as CEO. Prior to joining Fortra, she held numerous C-level and executive roles at companies including Jingit, Amcom Software - now Spok, and HighJump. Throughout her career, Bolseth has championed product vision and execution, improved time to market for product solutions, improved operational excellence and delivery, and helped drive financial growth and profitability.