Anetac Purchase Adds Continuous Monitoring Across Human and Machine Accounts
By Michael Novinson, Bank Info Security
https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/quest-software-acquires-identity-observability-vendor-anetac-a-32008
Quest Software purchased an identity observability startup founded by the longtime leader of vArmour to continuously monitor identities and detect abnormal behavior across an environment.
The Austin, Texas-based data management and cybersecurity vendor said its buy of Silicon Valley-based Anetac will provide the real-time visibility and monitoring needed for modern identity threats, said CEO Tim Page. He said Anetac will complement Quest’s existing capabilities in identity protection and recovery.
“We’ve got to build new technologies, which is what we’re doing with our IP,” Page told ISMG. “We’re not just servicing an old base. This is a space we’ve been focused on, so we’ve been on the lookout for any type of security companies that have good tech and we could fold in.”
Anetac, founded in 2023, employs 40 people and has been led since its inception by Timothy Eades, who ran application relationship management vendor vArmour for more than nine years. vArmour’s intellectual property was eventually bought by Chattanooga, Tennessee-based cyber disaster recovery firm Fenix24 in January 2025. Anetac’s engineering team is joining Quest as part of the deal, Page said (see: Fenix24 Buys vArmour IP to Boost Cyber Resilience, Recovery).
How Quest, Anetac’s Identity Capabilities Come Together
Enterprises now manage large populations of service accounts, APIs, bots and emerging artificial intelligence-driven agentic identities, which often act at machine speed and interact across multiple systems simultaneously, Page said. Because of this complexity, organizations need the ability to continuously observe identity behavior and quickly identify anomalies before they become security incidents.
“These type of non-human agentic identities are going to be a real, real issue,” Page said. “We knew they had built at scale a product that could do early detection of those. We didn’t do it at that scale.”
Anetac contributes monitoring and anomaly detection capabilities, while Quest has protection, recovery and remediation. The joint platform will not only identify suspicious behavior but also help customers determine how they want the system to respond. Organizations will be able to define automated actions, require approvals or trigger stronger security controls when suspicious activity is detected.
“What Anetac did also is branch us out of something we were experts in,” Page said. “So basically, in a nutshell, it expanded us. It works at scale.”
Anetac’s platform uses a graph database and other architectural innovations to detect anomalies in real time, which is especially important when dealing with modern threats that can rapidly change behavior, assume different characteristics or move across environments. The ability to identify suspicious activity immediately and pair it with automated protective actions is one of the primary perks of the purchase.
“This is a no-brainer bet,” Page said. “It’s a hot market. We have customers that need to convert into it, and we believe it’ll help us.”
How Anetac Will Strengthen Quest’s Foothold in Security
Much of the integration work has already been completed during the partnership period that preceded the deal. The remaining effort is less about connecting technologies and more about refining workflows, increasing automation and conducting large-scale testing. Quest’s biggest challenge is validating performance at enterprise scale rather than overcoming technical compatibility issues, he said.
“In the next three months, we’ll be fully integrated,” Page said. “We think we’ll be there closer to 60 days, but also know we’ve been partnered with them for the last 90 days and so we can run with them currently. But to have a full integration, it’ll be 60 to 90 days.”
Trusted data is becoming essential for organizations attempting to build AI and agentic capabilities, Page said. Because Quest has longstanding expertise in data management, governance and analytics, Page said the company believes it can create unique solutions that combine identity intelligence with trusted data capabilities.
“There’s a pretty big correlation that other companies haven’t been able to do, because they don’t have the depth of knowledge in the data world that we do,” Page said. “We’ve been modeling and doing a number of different analytics of all structured and unstructured data for a long time. People’s data structures matter to be able to build true agentic capability in their own companies.”
Quest historically has been known for identity products tied to Microsoft environments and migration projects, and Page said the company hasn’t aggressively targeted CISOs or positioned itself as a leading cybersecurity vendor. The Anetac deal changes that by giving Quest stronger observability capabilities and a more modern cloud-native identity platform, helping the company compete more directly.
“We want Quest to be known, so we’re putting our shoulders back and we’re hiring,” Page said. “We want people who know the environment to start validating us.”
