Imperva

Imperva is a cybersecurity company headquartered in San Mateo, California, with significant R&D operations in Israel. The company was founded in 2002 by Shlomo Kramer, Mickey Boodaei, Amichai Shulman, and Itsik Mantin. Shlomo Kramer previously co-founded Check Point Software Technologies and later Cato Networks. Imperva was publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker IMPV before being taken private in 2019 following its acquisition by Thales Group, the French defense and technology conglomerate, for approximately $2.1 billion.

Imperva's primary focus is application and data security. Its products are designed to protect web applications, APIs, and databases from external attacks, unauthorized access, and data breaches. The main buyer is enterprise security teams across financial services, healthcare, retail, and government sectors. The company addresses threats including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, DDoS attacks, and account takeover, positioning its platform as a security control layer between internet traffic and backend data stores.

Imperva's flagship product line is its Web Application Firewall (WAF), which inspects and filters HTTP traffic to block application-layer attacks. The company also offers the SecureSphere product family for on-premises database activity monitoring and database firewall capabilities, protecting databases from internal and external misuse. The Incapsula service — a cloud-delivered WAF and CDN platform acquired in 2014 — extended Imperva's reach into cloud-based DDoS mitigation and bot management. The combined platform was later rebranded under the Imperva name. API security and account takeover protection have been more recent product focus areas. Imperva's DDoS protection network operates through globally distributed scrubbing centers.

Direct competitors include Akamai Technologies (which acquired Guardicore in 2021 and competes across WAF, DDoS, and bot management), F5 Networks (application delivery and WAF), Cloudflare (which has aggressively expanded into WAF, DDoS, and API security), and Radware (also Israeli-founded, competing in application and network security). Gartner has recognized Imperva in its Magic Quadrant for Web Application and API Protection. Since the Thales acquisition in 2019, Imperva operates as a subsidiary within Thales's digital security portfolio alongside products such as Gemalto (also acquired by Thales).

Imperva has maintained R&D operations in Israel since its founding. Key technical founders including Amichai Shulman (long-serving CTO) and Itsik Mantin came from Israeli academic and intelligence-community backgrounds. The Israel office has historically housed core research and engineering functions. The company has been a known employer of security researchers with backgrounds in IDF intelligence units.