RSA acquires data-loss vendor Tablus

The acquisition gives RSA a toehold in the emerging market for securing against insider threats, such as thefts of proprietary information. It also continues the company's strategy of buying its way into new security markets.

RSA did not disclose financial details of the deal, but said the purchase will add data discovery, monitoring and classification and data loss prevention solutions to its current data security offerings. The security firm said it expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter.

RSA said it intends to merge Tablus' products with its EMC Infoscape information-management offering. This will create a "common platform" designed to help customers discover, classify and make policy-based decisions on their business data, the company said.

The end product will combine Tablus' expertise in locating and protecting intellectual property, sensitive personal information and security-related content with Infoscape, which helps organisations meet government data-retention and archiving mandates and prepare for litigation support.

"Information security has become an information-anagement problem: Today, many organisations struggle to establish exactly what data they have and where it all is – let alone how sensitive it is," Art Coviello, executive vice president at EMC and president of RSA, said in a statement. "The reality of information security is that you cannot secure what you cannot manage, and you cannot manage what you cannot find. This acquisition will expand our ability to help organisations secure their data.”

Products in this arena are focused on thwarting theft of information by insiders. These types of solutions are designed to overcome the typical enterprise's a lack of internal controls for dealing with insider threats.

Since its own acquisition by EMC, RSA has made several similar niche-product acquisitions. For instance, in February, at its own RSA Conference in San Francisco, RSA announced it had purchased Valyd Software, an India-based developer of data-encryption software.

In April 2006, it bought its way into a leadership position in the market for risk-based authentication solutions by acquiring PassMark for US$45 million. And in May 2005, RSA acquired Cyota, a provider of online anti-fraud products, for US$145 million.