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Flexera Software, which provides software licensing, compliance, security and installation solutions to application producers and enterprises, announced the acquisition of software vulnerability management solutions specialist Secunia.
Secunia products help IT security and operations teams proactively identify, assess and remediate software vulnerabilities. One such product is Vulnerability Intelligence Manager, which provides IT security teams with verified, accurate and comprehensive vulnerability intelligence from Secunia Research, along with workflow management, alerts and reporting.
“We see strong synergies between software vulnerability management and our existing software license optimization and application readiness solution lines,” Mark Bishof, president and CEO of Flexera, told eWEEK. “All these disciplines require at their foundation an organization’s ability to discover and inventory all hardware and software assets on their networks.”
A software license optimization solution such as Flexera’s FlexNet Manager Suite will reconcile inventory data with product information, contract information and usage data to help organizations buy only the software they need and use what they have, typically saving organizations as much as 25 percent of their software spend by keeping them in continual compliance and optimizing software spend, according to Bishof.
Another of Secunia’s offerings is Corporate Software Inspector, which provides IT operations teams with multiplatform assessment of software vulnerabilities and cost-effective patch creation and deployment to reduce enterprise software security risks.
“Flexera Software has historically grown both organically and through acquisition. Given the importance of cyber-security and software asset management today—and their synergies—it made sense for us to look in this area,” Bishof said. “The key was to find a leader in the space with leading technology, smart people, happy customers and a great cultural fit. We found that in Secunia.”
The company’s solutions are synergistic with Flexera’s software application readiness solution, AdminStudio Suite, as well as its software license management optimization platform, FlexNet Manager Suite.
“Flexera Software is connecting the dots to create a platform to manage all elements of the software license life cycle, from software usage, license compliance and optimization to application readiness to cyber-security. Failure to join these areas creates gaps that can create waste, inefficiency and risk,” Bishof said. “By providing cyber-security solutions, and over time integrating those with the leading software license optimization and application readiness platforms on the market, we will create a common platform and content that helps organizations reduce cost [and] risk and increase efficiencies, completely transforming software asset management practices.”
He pointed out that cyber-criminals routinely use vulnerabilities in software as gateways to exploit corporate networks, noting that 60 percent of attacks in recent years were performed by commercialized exploit toolkits, sold in the underground, allowing anyone to become a cyber-criminal.
“Writing malicious code is not rocket science,” Bishof said. “High-profile breaches can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention brand and reputational damage.”