Reports indicate that IBM on Monday is set to acquire Guardium, a privately held Israeli company that develops software applications that protects enterprise databases from being deliberately or accidentally accessed by unauthorized users.
According to financial newspaper TheMarker, IBM (NYSE: IBM) will pay $225 million for the 60-employee company which was originally based in Israel in 2002 before moving to Boston in 2003. It is a subsidiary of Log-On Software, also based in Israel.
Guardium makes the security software applications for IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and other popular database applications. Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Veritas (NASDAQ: VRTS) are among a handful of investors who have pumped more than $21 million in venture capital into the company in the past seven years.
The company’s flagship SQL-Guard application suite provides database security assessment, access policy control and enforcement as well as auditing and regulatory compliance features.
Earlier this year, IBM snapped up Exeros, a privately held company that specializes in helping businesses find connections between data held in multiple databases.
IBM shares trimmed $0.46 to $125.24 in early Monday trading.