Security appliance vendor Blue Coat Systems Inc. on Monday announced plans to acquire Cerberian Inc., a provider of URL filtering technology. Blue Coat has been in the process of adding new capabilities to its boxes for more than a year, and the Cerberian purchase gives the company access to four separate URL filtering databases.
Blue Coat, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., will pay $17.5 million in stock for the acquisition, which is expected to close in the next 60 days. The company already has support for URL filtering software from Secure Computing Corp., Websense Inc. and Surf Control PLC, on its ProxySG appliances.
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Cerberians solution is delivered as a managed service or as a component on a security appliance, and its database contains more than 5 million rated Web sites. The software is capable of rating sites in real time that is has never seen before.
Based in Draper, Utah, Cerberian is a venture-backed private company.
This is the second acquisition in the last year for Blue Coat. The company also purchased Ositis Inc., a small maker of Web anti-virus appliances. Blue Coat added that technology to its security gateways, as well.
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As part of the Cerberian acquisition, Blue Coat is making available to its customers an OEM version of Cerberians Web Manager software for the ProxySG box.
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