Entrust agreed to buy security software
specialist Business Signatures for $50 million in cash.
Dallas’ Entrust will pad its IdentityGuard consumer authentication platform
with Business Signatures’ eFraud zero-touch fraud-detection software,
which detects potential perpetrators of identity fraud online.
The “zero-touch” approach gauges application data in real time instead of
shunting it off to another location for analysis. Moreover, it doesn’t
impede or change the application. This efficiency can lead to a more secure
network.
Bill Conner, Entrust chairman, president and CEO, said
Entrust inked the deal to help customers meet compliance regulations set by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).
“Financial institutions in the United States are up against the year-end
FFIEC deadline, and only 20 percent have made it past the first phase of the
Implementation, because the solutions on the market are too hard and
invasive,” Conner said in a statement.
Business Signatures counts H&R Block and three of the top 10 largest banks
as its customers.
Entrust will inherit Business Signatures’ 40 employees and the company’s
Redwood City, Calif., headquarters.
Compliance regulations have put quite a scare into corporations, forcing
them to purchase security solutions they otherwise might not look at.
Entrust and other security vendors are capitalizing on the spending spurt.
The Entrust move is the latest in a string of security software purchases
by companies who want to tap into, or grab a larger share of, the
multi-billion-dollar market for protecting PCs and other computing devices.
Secure Computing agreed to acquire
CipherTrust last week.
In other deals this year, EMC moved on
RSA Security, VeriSign targeted
GeoTrust and Microsoft acquired
Whale Communications.