Houlihan Lokey Advises Phosphorus Cybersecurity

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Phosphorus Cybersecurity (Phosphorus) has been acquired by Dragos. Adding Phosphorus extends Dragos’ capabilities to secure connected devices across the extended operational technology environment, or xOT, delivering deeper device visibility, automated remediation, and continuous risk reduction.

Phosphorus is an xIoT security and management platform that discovers, assesses, and actively remediates risk across connected devices, including IoT, OT, IoMT, and IIoT. The platform offers the industry's most comprehensive security capabilities for connected devices, integrating with customers' existing infrastructure without requiring disruptive architectural changes. The platform actively discovers and provides deep visibility into devices across OT and enterprise environments. Phosphorus automates remediation workflows, including password rotations, firmware updates, certificate management, and configuration hardening, while helping organizations address compliance and reduce risk at scale.

Dragos is a global leader in OT cybersecurity. With nearly a decade of real-world experience handling landmark attacks on OT networks, Dragos understands the complexity and risks of industrial environments, operating on massive scale with unique systems and exacting availability requirements that are not protected by IT cybersecurity. Purpose-built for the xOT environment, Dragos technology delivers asset visibility, continuous monitoring, OT vulnerability management, segmentation validation, device protection, and real-time threat detection, powered by industry-leading OT threat intelligence and incident response teams. Dragos serves critical sectors including energy, manufacturing, water, transportation, and data centers. Privately held and headquartered in the Washington, DC area, Dragos operates globally across North America, EMEA and APAC.

The acquisition brings together two highly complementary capabilities to address the full scope of the xOT environment. For Dragos, adding Phosphorus extends its platform to secure the billions of connected devices embedded across critical infrastructure networks, closing a visibility and remediation gap that legacy OT tools have historically left unaddressed. For Phosphorus, joining Dragos means its connected device security capabilities can now be delivered at the scale and with the threat intelligence depth of the industry’s leading OT platform. The deal also complements Dragos’ 2024 acquisition of Network Perception, giving the combined platform end-to-end coverage across both traditional OT systems and the broader connected device landscape. Where Network Perception maps and secures the network architecture, Phosphorus secures the devices running on it.

“The connected devices you find everywhere in critical infrastructure are largely invisible to the cybersecurity programs that protect operational environments,” said Robert M. Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of Dragos. “With Phosphorus, we close the gap and secure xOT, the full environment that matters.” “We built Phosphorus to solve the connected device problem – the unmanaged devices, the default credentials, the firmware no one was updating. Together with Dragos, we can solve it with a depth and scale that wasn’t possible before. That’s what the next generation of OT cybersecurity looks like,” said Sonu Shankar, President and COO of Phosphorus.

Houlihan Lokey acted as exclusive financial advisor to Phosphorus. This deal highlights Houlihan Lokey’s continued success as a leading advisor in cybersecurity.

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