IBM Reportedly to Buy Guardium for Database Security

Rumors are circulating that IBMis acquiring database security vendor Guardium for $225 million.

Reports of the deal first surfaced late last week in Israeli newspaper TheMarker. Officials at IBMdeclined to comment on the rumors. If it goes forward, the deal would be a significant acquisition in the database activity monitoring space, which earlier this year saw Netezza purchase Tizor Systems. 

Founded in 2002, Waltham, Mass.-based Guardium’s product line spans database monitoring, enforcement, reporting and vulnerability assessment. The Guardium platform includes support for database products not only from IBM , but also Oracle, Microsoft, Teradata, Sybase and Sun Microsystems (MySQL).

Guardium competes with a number of companies, including Application Security, Sentrigo and Imperva.

Industry analyst Adrian Lane blogged Nov. 29 that IBMhas been interested in database activity monitoring (DAM) for many years, and that Guardium fits nicely with their portfolio.

“Guardium is one of the only firms still standing with a mainframe monitoring solution, which is a major prerequisite for much of IBM's customer base,” blogged Lane, an analyst with Securosis. “From the IBMperspective, the functionality makes sense and fits well into some of their existing security products. From an architectural standpoint, integration (as opposed to just sharing data and events) will be a challenge.”