San Francisco, Nov 11 (IANS): Cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday said that it will acquire attack surface management vendor Expanse in a $800 million deal.

Under the terms of the agreement, Palo Alto Networks will acquire Expanse for a total purchase price of approximately $670 million to be paid in cash and stock and approximately $130 million in replacement equity awards, each such amount subject to adjustment.

The acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal second quarter.

"We are thrilled to add the Expanse platform to our Cortex product suite," Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, said in a statement.

"By integrating Expanse's attack surface management capabilities into Cortex after closing, we will be able to offer the first solution that combines the outside view of an organisation's attack surface with an inside view to proactively address all security threats," the statement added.

As companies embark on digital transformation, they often leave critical IT assets exposed to the internet, creating vulnerable points that attackers can exploit.

This exposure has only accelerated with the rapid shift to the cloud and remote working.

San Francisco-based Expanse's internet collection and attribution platform constantly monitors the global internet to map exposed and untracked assets that comprise customers' attack surfaces, evaluate and prioritize risk, and provide mitigation.

Expanse's data provides Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) with a view of the enterprise from the outside, representing the view an attacker sees as they probe for points of weakness.

Once combined, the Expanse platform will significantly enrich Palo Alto Networks' Cortex product suite and create the ability to stitch together external, internal and threat data to provide organisations with an integrated view of the enterprise.

"We believe this will be a game-changer in security operations," Arora said.