By Will Sturgeon, 17 August 2004 16:25
NEWS A summer of security consolidation continued today with news that Computer Associates has bought privately owned vulnerability management firm Pest Patrol for an undisclosed all-cash sum.
Simon Perry, VP security strategy at CA, told silicon.com that "increased chatter from corporates regarding spyware" had encouraged CA to make the move for Pest Patrol, which includes protection against such applications, among other threats.
Perry added: "We see the addition of Pest Patrol as being a good rounding out of the overall threat management product suite, with tie-ins to both antivirus and vulnerability management strategy."
Earlier this month, taking part in silicon.com's security Q&A, Mike Small, director of security strategy at CA, said he expected to see a lot of security companies looking to bring in spyware management and prevention to their core products.
Although the move will perhaps surprise few in the industry, it does go against CA's 'no more acquisitions' line, announced in 2003. Even at the time, however, sources within the company suggested security would always be one area where that rule was a little more flexible.
Comments
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1. Joe Whitehead
"Pest" actually means a lot more then just the usual bad guys. Pest Patrol marks a lot of programs that are more for people like me. Hex editors, memory scanners/artmoney cheat tool, games, etc.... Anything that you REALLY don't want on a corporate PC.
For example: I use a program that allows me to remove programs from the taskbar/make them invisible, for my convenience when using applications that I don't want in my way, either on the taskbar or anywhere else. XP has something like this but I'm running Windows 2000. Imagine the obvious reasons you'de not want that kind of program on a corporate machine.
2. Rick Hunter
Whoever can deliver a product that offers Antivirus, email and internet filtering AND Ad/spyware protection is going to get a big chunk of the corporate marketplace....
3. anonymous
Now I know why my PestPatrol updater has not been able to make a connection, and there is no PestPatrol site. I wonder what us registered users are supposed to do for the updates we paid for. I don't have the slightest idea.
4. anon
Re: Unlimited updates: Class Action
Seems to me that when a company buys another firm, not only do they get the assets, but also the liabilities. Do we have any lawyers in the audience interested in helping with researching a class-action?
5. steven berry
you can retrieve any part of pest patrol updater from pest patrol
web site under downloads\version 4.0