Dive Brief:

• Accenture announced Monday that it acquired Israeli-based Maglan, a cyber forensics and simulation services provider. 

• The acquisition "advances Accenture’s strategy of leveraging Israel as a cybersecurity innovation hub to provide clients with cross-industry cyber defense consulting," according to Accenture's announcement. 

• The acquisition includes plans for a new R&D center that will leverage artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to predict coming attacks.

Dive Insight:

Accenture has shown a growing interest in cybersecurity recently. As a professional services firm, Accenture is working to add new, critical offerings to its portfolio.  The firm previously acquired cybersecurity firms FusionX and Cimation and took minority investments in Endgame Inc. and Team8.

"The growing variety and velocity of cyberattacks today cannot be eliminated with standard off-the-shelf solutions," said Omar Abbosh, chief strategy officer at Accenture. "Tackling the security problem from the perspective of the hacker is the name of the game." 

U.S. tech companies have been snapping up Israeli-based companies lately. Microsoft purchased Adallom, an Israel-based, cloud-delivered, security-as-a-service solution, last year. IBM bought EZSource, an Israeli company that helps make the process of modernizing mainframe applications easier, earlier this year, and Cisco bought Leaba Semiconductor, an Israeli chip fabrication company, for $320 million in cash in March. 

The acquisitions are all in an effort to boost cybersecurity offerings, a market that has the potential to rapidly expand to meet the demands companies face from active cyberthreats.