McAfee has plans to purchase Solidcore Systems for a total of $33 million in an effort to expand its whitelisting capabilities and reach new markets in the regulatory compliance space.
Altogether, McAfee will pay at least $33 million in cash up front along with an earn-out of up to an additional $14 million if certain performance targets are met.
Solidcore is known for its whitelisting and compliance enforcement capabilities that protect customers against vulnerable or malicious applications and ensure their adherence to regulatory compliance mandates.
Upon completion of the proposed acquisition, McAfee plans to couple Solidcore's whitelisting and compliance enforcement technology with its own compliance mapping and policy auditing capabilities, as well as its other antivirus, antispyware, host intrusion prevention and firewall offerings. The various technologies will be combined in McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator console.
"By continuing to innovate, McAfee stays one step ahead of our customers' needs and our competitors' offerings," said McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt in a company blog post. "With Solidcore, we will bring together best-in-class technologies and extend the current McAfee security portfolio beyond signature-based antimalware. We will combine dynamic whitelisting and application trust technology with leading McAfee antivirus, antispyware, host intrusion prevention, policy auditing and firewall technologies to help customers more readily mitigate the risks associated with vulnerable or malicious applications dowloaded by employees."
Executives said that the Solidcore acquisition will give McAfee a stronger foothold in the compliance market by adding real-time enforcement capabilities, while providing a scalable model for enforcing compliance across market segments that range from SMB to enterprise.
Solidcore's whitelisting capabilities will also be combined with McAfee's existing blacklisting technologies in a single endpoint security platform.
In addition, executives say that the merger will give McAfee a leg up in the embedded device market, which will help it supply security for automated teller machines, point-of-sale systems, multifunction printers, supervisory control and data acquisition system, mobile and other embedded devices. Among other things, Solidcore provides comprehensive malware protection for ATMs, POS systems, process control devices, mobile devices, servers and workstations.
Solidcore touts protection for more than 200,000 endpoints in more than 40 countries, which include more than 100 financial institutions and 15,000 retail stores.
Following the acquisition's closing, expected during the second quarter of 2009, the Solidcore team will be incorporated into the McAfee Risk and Compliance and Business Unit, headed by George Kurtz, senior vice president and general manager.
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