Vendor lineage
Imperva - from WebCohort to Thales
The WAF pioneer founded by a Check Point co-founder, now the application-security arm of a French defense giant.
Founded in Israel in 2002 as WebCohort by Shlomo Kramer (co-founder of Check Point, later founder of Cato Networks), Amichai Shulman, and Mickey Boodaei, the company shipped SecureSphere in 2003 and helped define the web application firewall category. NYSE IPO in 2011, a $2.1 billion Thoma Bravo take-private in January 2019, and a $3.6 billion acquisition by Thales completed on December 4, 2023.
Founding stories
WebCohort (renamed Imperva, 2004)
Three founders with pedigrees that read like an Israeli security syllabus: Kramer had co-founded Check Point itself; Shulman came from the IDF's electronic-intelligence world; Boodaei would later found Trusteer (acquired by IBM) and Transmit Security. Their thesis was the inside-out problem - networks were getting secured while the applications and data behind them stayed exposed. SecureSphere, shipped in 2003, attacked exactly that gap, and in 2004 the company renamed itself Imperva: making data impervious.
The timeline
- Thales
Announced July 25, 2023 and completed December 4, 2023: France's Thales acquires Imperva from Thoma Bravo for approximately $3.6 billion, folding it into its cyber defense business. Thales cited expected 2023 revenue above $500 million with $110 million EBITDA; about 1,400 employees, 500 of them in the Tel Aviv development center.
Globes; Reuters; CRN (completion Dec 4, 2023).
- Thoma Bravo takes it private
The private-equity firm completes a $2.1 billion take-private in January 2019 and delists the company; Distil Networks (bot management) is acquired the same year, CloudVector (API security) follows in 2021.
- Incapsula absorbed
Imperva acquires the remaining shares of Incapsula, its cloud application-security and CDN arm - the on-prem WAF pioneer becomes a cloud WAF provider too.
- NYSE IPO
Imperva goes public on the New York Stock Exchange (IMPV); headquarters move to the US the following year, with development anchored in Tel Aviv.
- Renamed Imperva
The company takes the name it keeps: business-critical data made impervious to attack.
- SecureSphere ships
SecureSphere Web Application Database Protection arrives - a pioneering web application firewall that learned application behavior, paired with database activity monitoring.
- WebCohort founded
Kramer, Shulman, and Boodaei start the company in Israel to protect what firewalls did not: the applications and the data behind them.
Flagship products and solutions
- SecureSphere / Imperva WAFThe web application firewall lineage from 2003 to the present - on-premises appliances and the cloud WAF descended from Incapsula.
- Database securityDatabase activity monitoring and data-centric protection - the second half of the founding thesis, now marketed as Imperva Data Security Fabric.
- Bot and API protectionAdvanced Bot Protection (from Distil Networks) and API Security (from CloudVector) - the modern application-attack surface.
Key innovations
- The WAF category itselfSecureSphere is one of the products that made 'web application firewall' a market - behavioral learning of application traffic instead of static rules alone.
- Data-centric securityImperva paired the WAF with database monitoring from the start: protect the data, not just the perimeter in front of it.
- The founders' diasporaAll three founders moved on to build again - Kramer founded Cato Networks, Boodaei founded Trusteer and Transmit Security, Shulman co-founded Nokod Security - a measure of the talent that started here.
Main markets
Imperva competes in web application and API protection (WAAP) - the market where Rodolfo teaches F5's Advanced WAF daily - and in data security, now as the application-security arm of Thales, the French aerospace and defense group.
The company's arc is the full lifecycle of a security vendor: Israeli startup, category pioneer, NYSE listing, private-equity ownership, and finally strategic acquisition by a defense conglomerate.
Analyst standing
- At the Thales acquisition, Imperva was expected to deliver over $500 million in 2023 revenue with $110 million EBITDA - a $3.6 billion valuation for a company that had gone private at $2.1 billion less than five years earlier.