[ISN] PatchLink pounces on little SecureWave

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Mon Jun 18 2007 - 22:06:20 PDT


http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=9183

By John E. Dunn
Techworld
18 June 2007

PatchLink has announced plans to acquire application security company 
SecureWave for an undisclosed sum.

The deal is being structured as a merger, with SecureWave shareholders 
getting shares in the new company in return for their current holding. 
However, this is more than a passive acquisition - one of SecureWave’s 
founding shareholders, Mangrove Capital Partners, is to be given a seat 
on the merged board. Both companies are privately-held which makes price 
disclosure unlikely.

This means two small but notable endpoint-related companies have been 
bought out in a week. On June 13, it was announced that SonicWall was 
acquiring SSL vendor Aventail for $25 million.

In this latest acquisition, buying Securewave represents a new departure 
for PatchLink, which does not currently have application security 
products to sell with its patching and vulnerability management 
software.

Securewave’s SecureEXE, in particular, is a good example of a 
‘whitelisting’ application, an area some see as the future of software 
security. The software identifies authorised applications and allows 
only these to run, thereby excluding malware without the need for 
signature-based detection.

"This emphasis on fixing problems before they occur will create a 
significant market for integrated security policy and remediation 
management. A proactive stance will also reduce security risk across the 
enterprise. PatchLink’s acquisition of SecureWave provides solutions to 
reduce risk,” the official released quoted IDC analyst Charles Kolodgy 
as saying.

Neither company qualifies as startup fodder, despite their private 
ownership. PatchLink has been around since 1991, and even SecureWave – 
the most notable tech company to come out of Luxembourg – was founded as 
long ago as 1996. The newly combined company will have 230 employees, 
large for a private outfit.



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