Security software giant Symantec is expanding its line of products with the acquisition of behavior-based security and anti-phishing firm
WholeSecurity.
The Austin, Texas-based WholeSecurity offers software that analyzes viruses,
worms and other malicious code and supplies real-time protection against
threats without the need for traditional security signatures.
“WholeSecurity provides industry leading protection from phishing attacks,
one of the fastest growing threats to online transactions, such as banking,
e-commerce, and auctions,” Enrique Salem, senior vice president, Symantec
Security Products and Solutions, said in a statement.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Symantec said the
transaction is expected to close in October.
Behavior-based security technology is a hot trend in the computer security
industry, and Symantec’s entrance into the field likely signals it is a
trend that will continue to increase.
WholeSecurity’s behavior based suite, dubbed Confidence Online, identifies
collective threats such as Trojan horses, keystroke loggers and phishing
sites by monitoring and analyzing their actions and characteristics,
Symantec said. It can then determine whether threats are active processes or
web sites are safe or malicious.
This technology can also detect and mitigate unknown threats by their
behavior without traditional signatures or patches thereby protecting users
against zero-day attacks, Symantec said.
“In addition, WholeSecurity’s family of solutions provides critical
behavior-based security technology that we expect to be a core component of
Symantec’s baseline consumer security and enterprise desktop solutions,”
Salem said.
Symantec was not immediately available to comment. WholeSecurity’s behavior-based technology can addresses applications ranging from browser-based phishing detection and notification to on-demand delivery of malicious code detection.
“We have been the first line of defense for our customers, protecting them
against new forms of malicious threats before signatures can be created,” J.
Peter Selda, president and chief executive officer, WholeSecurity, said in a
statement. “Combining our behavior-based technology with Symantec’s industry
leading solutions will allow us to deliver this capability to a much broader
audience and move us further toward our vision of providing zero-hour
protection for every endpoint.”
Confidence Online for Corporate PCs provides “always on” protection for
corporate IT managed computers, Symantec said. While Confidence Online for
E-Commerce protects consumer e-commerce by delivering on-demand security
that stops eavesdropping threats from running on a consumer’s computer.
And Confidence Online Phish Finder provides real-time, browser-based
protection from fraudulent websites.
