Owl Cyber Defense Acquires Cloud Cyber Security Company

Owl Cyber Defense the leading provider of hardware-enforced cyber security solutions for military, national security, intelligence and critical infrastructure organizations, today announced that it has acquired Big Bad Wolf Security (“BBWS”) – a Maryland-based technology company focused on next generation cloud infrastructure security for government and commercial applications. BBWS brings a highly skilled team of cyber security innovators with specific expertise in cloud security and Cross Domain Solutions (“CDS”) to the Owl family.

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Owl has been formed through the acquisition and integration of several complementary firms to solve the most significant problems of domain boundary security and establish itself as the leader in CDS:

• Owl (2017) – superior card and data diode technology;
• Tresys (2019) – advanced filtering and content inspection with the first US Certified exportable CDS;
• Assured Collaboration Systems (2020) – the only U.S. government approved Voice over IP (“VoIP”) and Video Teleconference (“VTC”) CDS as well as the industry’s most advanced Full Motion Video (“FMV”) filtering capability; and
• Big Bad Wolf Security (2023) – cloud native security.

Owl, a DC Capital Partners portfolio company, has invested over $100 million in advanced CDS technologies in recent years, leading to the only RTB-certified CDS for VTC and VOIP communications.  With new, next generation product releases on the horizon in each of its core diode and CDS product areas, the company felt the time was right to add additional key capabilities.

“We are very deliberate in our approach to the market,” said Thomas J. Campbell, Founder and Managing Partner of DC Capital Partners. “We focus on segments of the market where our products provide discriminating, industry leading capabilities, and cloud will be no different.”

BBWS’s technology accelerates expansion of Owl’s current product portfolio into cloud native form (e.g., Cloud CDS) and enables expansion into new solutions by bringing technology that provides deep insights into the Identity and Access Management (IAM) configuration of AWS and other major cloud providers.

“We are excited about the acquisition of BBWS,” said Ken Walker, CEO and President of Owl.  “We are already working to shape the future of cloud CDS with our Government Cloud Service Provider partners, and this capability will greatly enhance that offering.”

Owl is a leading provider of CDS to the U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”) and Intelligence Community, with industry leading products in the Collaboration, Transfer, and Data Diode market segments.  “Cloud CDS is still a nascent market,” said Jerry Chernock, Partner at DC Capital Partners. “We see tremendous potential here, and the acquisition of BBWS expands Owl’s product portfolio to meet this emerging need for our clients.”

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Karl MacMillan, CEO of BBWS, is no stranger to Owl, having worked with Owl on several cross domain projects and having previously served as CTO of Tresys. He is also one of the primary developers of SELinux, the Mandatory Access Control (“MAC”) mechanism in Linux systems that allows administrators to have more control over who can access their systems. Leveraging his deep knowledge, BBWS has built a reputation around cross domain and cloud expertise that will form the building blocks for developing cloud native cross domain solutions for Owl’s clients.