McAfee took a big step into the encryption market Oct. 8 when the Santa Clara, Calif., security vendor announced plans to purchase SafeBoot B.V. for $350 million in cash.
SafeBoot is an enterprise security software vendor heavily involved in the market for encryption and access control. In one swift stroke, McAfee officials said, they hope to make a mark in what they called the multibillion dollar, under-penetrated data protection market.
“SafeBoots industry-leading mobile security solutions address a critical pain point for customers—the protection of confidential and proprietary information,” said Dave DeWalt, CEO of McAfee, in a statement.
He added that with the acquisition of SafeBoot, McAfee becomes a leader in the fast-growing $1 billion encryption market and will be able to offer a complete data protection solution that combines SafeBoots device, full-disk and content encryption with McAfees data loss prevention solutions.
“This combination helps advance our Security Risk Management strategy and extend our leadership at the end-point,” DeWalt said.
To read about McAfee entering the data loss market, click here.
McAfee expects to close the acquisition by the end of the fourth quarter. Following the closing, SafeBoot will be incorporated into the new Data Protection product business unit, which will be headed by current SafeBoot CEO Gerhard Watzinger. McAfee plans to integrate SafeBoots products into ePolicy Orchestrator.
SafeBoot serves more than 4,200 customers, with about 47 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, 29 percent in North America, and 23 percent in Asia Pacific, according to the company.
The SafeBoot Data Protection Suite offers file and folder-based encryption as well as full-disk encryption for laptops, smart phones, USB drives and PDAs. It also enables users to encrypt file servers and provides protection to ensure that confidential files remain secure as they move throughout an organization.
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