Security Watch | Matt Hines » SafeNet buying Ingrian

February 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

SafeNet buying Ingrian

TAGS: Security

After a brief pause in the buying cycle, consolidation is happening again in the security sector, this time in the data encryption market.

SafeNet, which specializes in disk and file encryption, along with related networking and access control technologies, announced Friday that it has signed a deal to acquire Ingrian Networks, which is focused on encryption devices used in data centers and distributed computing environments.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the companies said they expect the transaction to close in less than one month's time.

At first glance it would seem that SafeNet is making the deal in the hopes of becoming more of a soup-to-nuts provider of enterprise data encryption technology.

The move clearly expands its footprint into the market for large customers with the ability to lock-down information in bigger shops, managed services settings and throughout networks of geographically-separated branch offices.

From a high-level, the deal would also seem to help the company move in the direction that analysts are predicting the encryption segment will continue to evolve, with customers seeking providers that can either handle management of all forms of the technology, or via applications embedded into other forms of hardware and software.

SafeNet already has an embedded security product line.

Company executives also played up what Ingrian brings to the table in terms of ID and access management tools.

"This acquisition enables SafeNet to offer enterprise data security for database and server centers, and to become the first enterprise data protection solutions vendor to provide comprehensive offerings for the data centers and client devices," Chris Fedde, SafeNet's president said in a statement.

"Ingrian complements SafeNet's solutions and allows customers already purchasing identity and access management products to add more depth to their protection strategies and enhance their compliance posture," he said.

Cashing in on drivers such as the PCI DSS standard, company executives said that the combined will be uniquely positioned to offer both the database, file and mainframe encryption software provided by Ingrian along with SafeNet's existing products, which also include high-speed network encryption and content rights management tools.

Ingrian also brings along strategic technology partnerships with well-known platform providers including Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

Many experts believe that encryption will increasingly be utilized in an integrated fashion in the products built by such companies, rather than being installed and managed as independent technologies.

"As organizations continue to invest in encryption technologies, they are looking to expand the benefits of enterprise data protection throughout the data center and beyond the edge to mobile devices," said Michael Howard, Ingrian's CEO.

In a quote published as part of the press release announcing the deal, the companies quote at least one analyst as looking favorably on the marriage of the two encryption vendors.

Interestingly, Stratecast's Michael Suby observes that the firms should have an opportunity to cash-in on the demand for data leak prevention (DLP) technologies, which tend to use encryption as their de facto form of policy enforcement.

"Threat levels for electronically stored and transmitted data are increasing and it is important for information security vendors to be able to provide comprehensive DLP tools that are designed to work together and close gaps that could otherwise exist in protection schemes," Suby writes. "In this way, SafeNet's acquisition of Ingrian speaks to elements of the DLP synchronization of functionality that [we] believe is important for organizations to deploy."

Posted by Matt Hines on February 29, 2008 10:36 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: