Authentica to Buy Shym Technology

Authentica Inc., a provider of rights-management security software, has agreed to acquire Shym Technology Inc.

The deal will be announced on Monday, but the terms have not be disclosed.

Both companies serve the financial services, health care and pharmaceutical sectors. Authentica, of Waltham, Mass., and Shym also share a common investor in North Bridge Venture Partners, a venture fund also based in Waltham.

As part of the acquisition deal, Jim Geary, Shyms CEO, will become executive vice president of business development and marketing at Authentica. Gearys cousin, William Geary, is one of the partners at North Bridge Ventures.

Eleven other Shym employees, mainly executives and technologists, will also join Authentica.

"The acquisition of Shym greatly strengthens Authentica in thre important ways," said Lance Urbas, Authenticas president and CEO. "We add depth and breadth to our existing product lines and technology suite, we significantly strengthen our balance sheet and we add talented resources to our team."

Authentica will add Shyms MailShym product to its own line of e-mail security tools, MailRecall and MailRecall gateway. MailShym is an automated S/MIME secure-messaging product that enables administrators to create and enforce centrally-managed policies for signing and encrypting messages.

The MailRecall line gives users the ability to control how message recipients can view, print, forward or copy information. The company has similar products, called PageRecall and NetRecall, for documents and Web content.

Shym, of Needham, Mass., raised more than $17 million in funding last March and is one of the major participants in the Identrus LLC program, an identity assurance program for financial institutions.