McAfee plans to acquire network security vendor Secure Computing for roughly $465 million.
According to McAfee, the move is meant to strengthen its network security portfolio with Secure Computing’s firewall, intrusion prevention, and Web and e-mail security tools.
“Today’s announcement of this pending acquisition is a natural extension of McAfee’s security-only focus,” Dave DeWalt, CEO and president of McAfee, said in a statement. “We expect the pending combination of McAfee and Secure Computing will create an annual projected combined revenue of just under $500 million in the network security segment of our SRM (security risk management) portfolio.”
The acquisition is also aimed at extending McAfee’s position as far as security SAAS (software as a service), as Secure Computing just launched its Secure Web Protection Service a few months ago. Ironically, Secure Computing moved to make an acquisition of its own earlier in September when it announced its intent to purchase Securify.
The proposed acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and Secure Computing stockholder approval, and is expected to close in the latter part of the fourth quarter of 2008. After the closing, Secure Computing’s technologies will be incorporated under McAfee’s Network Security product business unit, which will be headed by Secure Computing CEO Dan Ryan.