Dragos, the industrial cybersecurity company, said on September 21, 2026 that it had closed its acquisition of NetRise, an Austin, Texas startup that analyses the firmware and compiled software running on devices. Dragos completed the purchase of asset discovery company runZero at the same time.
Both deals closed alongside Accenture's majority investment in Dragos, which was announced in June. Dragos did not disclose what it paid for NetRise or runZero, and did not say what share of the company Accenture now holds.
NetRise chief executive Thomas Pace and chief technology officer and chief scientist Michael Scott are joining Dragos with their full team. They will help integrate NetRise into the Dragos Platform while continuing to support existing customers.
What NetRise built
NetRise was founded in 2020. Its platform analyses compiled code and firmware rather than source code, which lets it build a software bill of materials (SBOM) for devices whose makers never published one. The result is what the company calls a software asset inventory, a record of every component running on an organisation's critical systems.
From that inventory, NetRise flags risks such as outdated components and hardcoded credentials, and monitors the software supply chain continuously. Dragos said it also produces documentation for compliance regimes including NERC CIP, NIS2 and directives from the US Transportation Security Administration.
"Every organization understands the value of an asset inventory, this is why it is critical security control #1, yet no one has a software asset inventory, even though it is critical security control #2," Pace said when the company last raised money.
“Cybersecurity for these environments is more than a matter of uptime. It’s about whether the lights stay on and the water stays safe when an adversary attacks.”
The founders and the funding
In April 2025 NetRise raised a $10 million round led by DNX Ventures, with existing investors Miramar Digital Ventures, Sorenson Capital, Squadra Ventures and Talons Ventures taking part. The company described it as growth funding and SecurityWeek reported it as a Series A. It brought total funding to $24.8 million.
John Stewart, president of Talons Ventures and a former chief security and trust officer at Cisco, said at the time that dependence on vendors, software libraries and compiled code had become the norm and that attackers knew it.
Why Dragos is buying
Dragos is extending its focus from operational networks to what it calls xOT, every system that can influence a physical process, from devices and networks to cloud services and the software supply chain. runZero brings asset discovery across IT, OT and cloud; NetRise goes a layer deeper, into what is running inside each device.
Both will feed the Dragos Intelligence Fabric, the company's store of OT telemetry and incident response data, and its EmberAI assistant for analysts. "Intrusions into OT networks have become a daily reality for critical infrastructure operators," said Dmitri Alperovitch, the CrowdStrike co-founder who is returning to the Dragos board. He said Dragos, NetRise and runZero now give defenders the tools they had been missing.
Why firmware visibility is in demand
Attacks on operational systems have been a recurring theme in 2026. The Next Web noted that Iran-linked hackers breached a UK power plant in August and that a House report set out Chinese state access to US telecoms networks in the Salt Typhoon campaign. Dragos cited a Gartner report saying the old assumption that operational systems are isolated by an air gap "is no longer defensible in today's operational environments".
Regulation is adding pressure too. The EU's Cyber Resilience Act brought in a 24-hour reporting deadline that is changing how companies track what is inside their software, which plays directly to NetRise's ability to produce SBOMs for compiled code.
What happens to customers
Dragos said it will keep operating independently, under its existing leadership, with Robert M. Lee now chairman as well as chief executive. It has not said when NetRise's product will be folded into the Dragos Platform; Lee said details would come in the coming months, and the leaders of the three companies are due to discuss the roadmap in a webinar in October.
