Barracuda acquires Evo Security to strengthen AI-powered identity security for MSPs

Identity has become one of the biggest targets in cybersecurity, and attackers are using AI to move faster than ever. Barracuda is betting that managed service providers need a simpler way to defend customers against those threats. On Tuesday, the cybersecurity company announced it has acquired identity and access management startup Evo Security, adding identity protection, privileged access management, and identity threat detection to its BarracudaONE platform.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition comes as identity security spending continues to climb, fueled by a surge in credential theft, privilege abuse, and attacks targeting cloud identities. By bringing Evo Security into BarracudaONE, the company aims to give managed service providers a single platform to manage identity protection across thousands of customer environments, rather than relying on multiple disconnected products.

Barracuda said the combined platform now brings together identity and access management, privileged access management, access control, identity protection, and identity threat detection and response into a single environment. The company says the goal is to help MSPs manage millions of human and machine identities without adding operational complexity.

“The agentic AI era” has introduced a new class of security risks that extend beyond human users, according to Barracuda CEO Rohit Ghai.

“In the agentic AI era, protecting both human and non-human identities is imperative for delivering cyber resilience. Existing enterprise identity solutions are complex, costly, and fail to meet the needs of MSPs that must scale to securely manage millions of identities across thousands of customer environments. We are thrilled to combine Evo Security’s partner-first innovation with our vision of BarracudaONE and offer a complete, intelligent, easy, and open platform that closes this gap. As AI accelerates the speed and scale of identity-centric attacks, this combination is uniquely positioned to help organizations big and small stay ahead of these threats,” Ghai said.

Identity has become one of the most attractive entry points for attackers. Compromised credentials, stolen administrator privileges, and misconfigured access controls remain common ways cybercriminals gain access to corporate networks. AI tools are making phishing campaigns more convincing and speeding up credential-based attacks, putting extra pressure on organizations that manage large numbers of users across cloud services.

Barracuda believes Evo Security fills a gap that many MSP-focused identity products have struggled to address. Evo built its platform around managed service providers rather than large enterprises, combining multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, privileged access management, help desk verification, and RADIUS authentication into a single multi-tenant platform.

Michael Roth, Evo Security’s founder and CEO, said joining Barracuda gives the company the resources to bring its technology to more customers.

“We built Evo Security to solve the identity challenges MSPs face every day. Joining Barracuda gives us the scale, reach and resources to accelerate that mission globally. Our identity-first approach was designed from day one for MSP operations, and now, together with BarracudaONE, we can bring modern identity security, privileged access management and automation to far more partners and the customers they protect.”

Barracuda plans to integrate Evo Security’s technology directly into BarracudaONE. The combined platform will connect Evo’s identity and privilege management tools with Barracuda SecureEdge Zero Trust Network Access, Entra ID Backup, and Managed XDR. That gives security teams one place to manage identity access, recover Microsoft Entra ID configurations after an incident, apply least privilege policies, and detect identity-driven attacks across email, endpoints, cloud workloads, and networks.

The deal reflects a broader shift across the cybersecurity industry. Identity has moved from being a standalone IT function to a central part of cyber defense. AI agents, cloud services, contractors, remote employees, and machine identities have dramatically increased the number of accounts organizations must protect. Security vendors are responding by building platforms that integrate identity, access control, threat detection, and incident response rather than treating them as separate products.

Evo Security’s employees have joined Barracuda as part of the acquisition. Barracuda said it will continue supporting Evo’s existing MSP customers as the technology becomes part of the BarracudaONE platform.