Trend Micro has signed an agreement to buy Third Brigade to extend its data center protection strategy with virtualization and host intrusion prevention technologies. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2009.Trend Micro is extending its data center protection strategy with a
planned purchase of server and application security vendor Third
Brigade.
According to Trend Micro,
the company is buying the business to accelerate its dynamic datacenter
security strategy and to provide customers with access to critical
security and compliance software and vulnerability response services.
The two companies have had an OEM agreement in place for 18 months,
with Trend Micro integrating Third Brigades intrusion prevention
technology into Trend Micro OfficeScan.
Not only is it the intrusion defense, intrusion
detection/prevention capabilities, but also the Web application
firewall, application control and reporting and inspection capabilities
that Third Brigade brings to Trend Micro that were very excited about
in dealing with the dynamic data center and the security challenge of
those data centers, said Steve Quane, president of the North America
Business Unit and General Manager of SMB at Trend Micro. We have a lot
of enterprise data center customers coming to us asking us to take a
leadership position in how both applications are protected and
controlled, [and] also on how IDS and IPS technologies and firewalling
all work in a virtual environment.
Thats why the company is excited to extend its Trend Micro
ServerProtect product lines with Third Brigades technology
and leverage Third Brigades expertise in securing the data
center, he explained during a conference call with analysts and media.
Paul Roberts, an analyst with The 451 Group, said the acquisition
bolsters Trend Micros capabilities in some areas - host intrusion
prevention for one, making it more competitive with McAfee and
Symantec. Both those companies made acquisitions in the IPS space
a few years back, he noted. More important and intriguing is Trend
Micro's push into the data center, virtualization and cloud security space, Roberts said.
Obviously, this is a vision thats similar to the one (Symantec)
articulated when it acquired Veritas, but stays focused on the core
threat protection problem rather than recasting Trend as a security +
storage vendor, he opined. Whats next? Theyll need to do more to
develop their data protection story. That could presage some kind of
investment in the encryption space. They could also double-down with
some kind of database monitoring technology, as well as Web application
firewall capabilities to address PCI and the major avenue to all that
juicy data in your databases.
Trend Micro officials said they will continue to develop along the
lines of Third Brigades existing product road map and will continue to
offer its stand-alone products for the near term as well as the
companies integrate elements of their portfolios.
The acquisition is subject to certain approvals, and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2009.