CA has taken a renewed interest this week in network security with two
additions to its eTrust portfolio. The company acquired spyware killer PestPatrol and
launched a consulting practice to
assist partners with Vulnerability Manager release 8 and
it acquired spyware killer PestPatrol.
The all-cash acquisition of PestPatrol gives the company another tool to aid in bolstering
network defenses. PestPatrol, a popular application for removing adware, spyware, Trojans and
other back-door malware
product and renamed eTrust PestPatrol before it’s integrated with anti-virus
and spam protection products offered in CA’s eTrust Threat Management
software package.
The software is currently used by companies like Yahoo
and Zone Labs, and PestPatrol developers already have a
toolkit for programmers to integrate within a Web services
Weiss said a majority of the PestPatrol staff would be retained, mainly
engineers, sales and support staff. Details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
CA’s eTrust component announced this week gives partners paid advice on appliance development,
manufacturing and logistics for its Vulnerability Manager r8, an appliance
that acts as the security point of contact for networks. The appliance,
first announced earlier this year,
scans the network for vulnerabilities, patches machines if needed
and keeps the network up-to-date when new vulnerabilities are discovered.
Controls let administrators decide whether to handle the vulnerability on
their own or have the manager automatically patch the system.
The software and services company is focusing more attention
on security attacks on the business network, though company officials
maintain its eTrust security management group is an area they’ve
concentrated on for some time.
“We’ve had a pretty good focus on security for a couple
of years now,” said Toby Weiss, CA senior vice president of eTrust security
management solutions. “We formed our eTrust business unit about
two-and-a-half years ago. Security has always had individual solutions but we’re seeing more and more
companies needing something to manage all their overall security.”
