Check Point to buy Avanan, which provides tools for protecting cloud-based email and collaboration suites, source says the deal is valued between $250M-$300M
Michael Novinson / CRN :
Context & Ripple Effects
Check Point is returning to the M&A well three years after its $175M purchase of Dome9, another Tel Aviv-born cloud security company — this time paying a reported $250M-$300M for Avanan, whose tools protect cloud-hosted email and collaboration suites rather than cloud infrastructure. The move takes Check Point from guarding where workloads run to guarding what users send and share inside them.
The price lands almost exactly where Zix paid for AppRiver two years earlier — a $275M deal that consolidated standalone email and web protection — suggesting the market has settled on that range as the going rate for an email-security book of business.
First-order effects
- Avanan's customers get a larger parent behind their email and collaboration-suite protection, while Check Point gains a product line that sits inside Microsoft 365-style environments instead of at the network edge where its traditional appliances live.
- Zix, which built its email franchise through the AppRiver acquisition, now faces Check Point selling email security bundled alongside firewall and cloud offerings it does not have.
Second-order effects
- Rival platform consolidators — most visibly Palo Alto Networks, which has shown appetite for Israeli cyber startups — come under pressure to answer with their own SaaS-email or collaboration-security purchases rather than build organically.
- Email security pricing shifts from per-mailbox gateway contracts toward API-based deployment attached to broader platform subscriptions, squeezing pure-play email vendors' ability to sell standalone.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, security consolidates around diversified platforms that bundle endpoint, network, cloud-infrastructure, and now collaboration-layer protection, leaving point-product email vendors as acquisition targets rather than long-term independents.
- Tel Aviv's startup ecosystem keeps functioning as the default R&D pipeline for US-listed security buyers — Dome9 then Avanan for Check Point suggests a repeatable sourcing pattern, not a one-off.
The trend: Legacy network-security incumbents are buying their way into SaaS-native email and collaboration security through Tel Aviv acquisitions rather than building those products themselves.