--- title: "Dragos Finishes the Shopping Run: NetRise and runZero Join the OT Shelf" description: "Fresh off Accenture’s majority investment, the industrial-security firm rounds out a platform for watching the world’s machinery" author: "Tomasz Idle" published: 2026-09-28T07:49:45Z modified: 2026-09-28T15:17:58Z url: https://rews.cc/a/dragos-finishes-the-shopping-run-netrise-and-runzero-join-th-112fc2 language: en tags: ["cybersecurity", "acquisition", "ot", "infrastructure", "ai", "tech"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Dragos Finishes the Shopping Run: NetRise and runZero Join the OT Shelf *Fresh off Accenture’s majority investment, the industrial-security firm rounds out a platform for watching the world’s machinery* By Tomasz Idle · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/dragos-finishes-the-shopping-run-netrise-and-runzero-join-th-112fc2 ## In brief - Dragos completed its purchases of NetRise and runZero; deals close after Accenture’s majority investment in Dragos - Dragos was valued at $3.2B in June, with the combined business put at $4.175B - runZero adds asset visibility; NetRise scans firmware for outdated components and hardcoded credentials, per the announcement - Robert M. Lee adds the chairmanship; Dragos says it keeps independence and vendor neutrality under Accenture’s majority - Accenture’s Sidhu, Luque and Coltsmann join the board; Dmitri Alperovitch returns Industrial cybersecurity had a lovely founding myth, and it was called the air gap. The machines that spin turbines, open valves and keep water safe lived, in theory, on their own little island of cables, and as long as nobody ran a wire from the island to the internet, attackers would be stuck on the mainland shaking their fists. The industry has spent the last few years quietly agreeing, in the more euphemistic language available to it, that the island is now a peninsula — that the machines are reachable, by wireless, by enterprise network, by things nobody remembers plugging in. When the myth dies, somebody has to sell you the surveillance system. Dragos now intends to sell you the whole thing. The OT security firm, whose stated mission is “to safeguard civilization” (one admires the modest brief), announced that it has completed its acquisitions of NetRise and runZero, Cybersecurity Insiders reports, wrapping up a spree that followed Accenture’s majority investment in Dragos. The dates, per [Accenture’s own account](https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/accenture-to-strengthen-critical-infrastructure-defense-with-end-to-end-cybersecurity-platform-in-age-of-ai-driven-cyber-threats-and-geopolitical-risk): NetRise closed on July 31, the Dragos investment on September 16, runZero on September 17. When the deals were announced in June, Dragos [valued itself at $3.2 billion](https://www.dragos.com/blog/dragos-joins-forces-with-accenture) and put the combined business, with the two acquired companies, at $4.175 billion. What does the money buy, conceptually? Dragos says the combination will help organizations identify and protect their entire “xOT” environment — extended operational technology, which translates from brochure-speak to: the connected devices, networks, cloud infrastructure, software supply chains and operational systems that physically do things in the world. > The world’s largest companies have invested heavily in enterprise IT security, yet it’s their cyber-physical systems that generate revenue and carry national and local security impact. That is Robert M. Lee, who now adds Chairman of the Board to his existing title of CEO. Dragos says it will keep operating independently under its leadership team, maintaining the vendor neutrality required to secure infrastructure built from many providers’ technologies — a claim worth the pitch of an eyebrow now that a global consulting firm holds the majority. The eyebrow finds company: joining Dragos’s board are Accenture’s global cybersecurity lead Harpreet Sidhu, global OT cybersecurity lead Luis Luque, and corporate development’s John Coltsmann. Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike, returns to the board as well. The acquired teams arrive whole. runZero’s CEO is HD Moore; NetRise brings CEO Thomas Pace and CTO and Chief Scientist Michael Scott (that really is his name; no paper company is involved). Their portfolios divide the island’s troubles neatly. runZero extends asset visibility and exposure management by ingesting the IT, OT and cloud inventories organizations already have, on the theory that you cannot defend what you haven’t counted. NetRise reads the firmware and software on connected devices, finging outdated components and hardcoded credentials, and turns up the documentation needed for NERC CIP, NIS2, TSA directives and other regulatory scrapbooks. Dragos also noted it acquired Phosphorus earlier this year to address the billions of connected devices embedded across critical infrastructure. The announcement even enlists Gartner to pronounce the myth dead: “The bidirectional cyber-physical continuum is facing a significantly expanded attack surface... This effectively dismantles the legacy assumption of air-gapped isolation, which is no longer defensible in today’s operational environments.” In plain speech: the island has bridges now, some of which you built yourself while asleep, and the attack surface you cannot see is still attack surface. Alperovitch put the stakes more bluntly in the same statement: “It’s about whether the lights stay on and the water stays safe when an adversary attacks.” The three companies throw their data into something called the Dragos Intelligence Fabric — a decade of OT-specific telemetry and incident-response expertise — and an AI assistant named EmberAI, specific to operational environments, will use the enlarged dataset to hand analysts faster guidance through the platform. A webinar with Lee, Moore and Pace will explain the integration strategy, because there is always a webinar. None of this is unreasonable; power grids and water systems are being probed daily, and somebody competent really should be watching them. What has changed is the arrangement: the firm watching the pumps is now majority-owned by the consultants who advise the pump owners, on a balance sheet that prices vigilance at $4.175 billion. The air gap is gone. What has replaced it is a purchase order — a thicker, better-funded purchase order, but a purchase order all the same.