Storage giant EMC will be adding risk management and compliance technologies to its portfolio after announcing Monday that it will acquire Kansas-based Archer Technologies.
Archer Technologies, which specializes in risk management technologies, will be incorporated into RSA, the security division of EMC, and will remain in its Overland Park headquarters. The deal is expected to close during the first quarter of 2010.
"You can't manage what you can't see," said Art Coviello, president of RSA, the Security Division of EMC, in a statement. "Traditional security management focuses primarily on addressing technology issues, but our customers are telling us that their real challenges are in the areas of policy management, audit and compliance."
Altogether, Archer, which touts about six million licensed users, offers products around policy, risk compliance, enterprise, incident, vendor, threat, business continuity and audit management, all built on its Archer SmartSuite Framework, and tailored to accommodate both on-premise or cloud environments.
Specifically, the Archer acquisition will allow EMC to offer customers government, risk and compliance visibility and enforcement for regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as well as internal corporate policies, across both physical and virtualized platforms.
"Operating in a cost-reduced environment amid a tough marketplace, with a heightened governmental oversight and a promise of more regulations in 2010, poses significant challenges for today's boards and management, who also face rising expectations from stakeholders," said Greg Bell, principal and global services leader for KPMG's Information Protection Practice, in a statement. "It becomes more important for organizations to secure their business intelligence, manage enterprise risks, comply with regulatory standards and provide corporate oversight in a holistic fashion."
Coviello added that Archer's products would expand the company's existing portfolio by providing more robust policy management capabilities, as well as greater visibility into risk and compliance environments. Archer's flexible platform will also be used to augment the security and governance, risk and compliance capabilities in EMC Consulting, a division of EMC Global Services.
"With Archer, we can also make information security a more integrated element of overall IT-GRC efforts," he said. "We can help customers unify their visibility and processes across security business continuity, configuration management and a range of broader IT compliance tasks."
