McAfee, Inc. Agrees to Acquire Reconnex and Expects to Redefine the Data Protection Market
1 August 2008 
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McAfee to Help Organizations Automate the Discovery and Protection of Data
SANTA CLARA, Calif., and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 31, 2008 – McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately owned Reconnex for $46 million in cash. Reconnex is a leading data loss prevention (DLP) company with unique technology that learns and adapts to automate the ongoing protection of data.
“Data protection is the number one concern of chief information security officer’s, but today’s DLP solutions take too long to deploy and obtain results,” said Dave DeWalt, chief executive officer and president of McAfee. “With the pending acquisition of Reconnex, McAfee expects to redefine the entire data protection market by bringing together a leader in the hottest segment with our comprehensive portfolio of data protection technologies. We expect that this will enable us to leapfrog other data protection vendors and to reinforce our position as the largest dedicated security company.”
Reconnex’s technology helps an organization protect all the information assets on its network without requiring upfront knowledge of what needs to be protected, regardless of how that information is stored, secured or communicated. Through the pending acquisition of Reconnex, McAfee® expects to further enhance its leadership position in proactive security and risk management solutions.
“The growing number of high-profile incidents in which customer records, confidential information and intellectual property were leaked (or lost/stolen) has created an explosive demand for solutions that protect against the deliberate or inadvertent release of sensitive information,” said Brian Burke, security research analyst at IDC. “This acquisition creates a great opportunity for McAfee to fulfill a critical need in this space. IDC forecasts worldwide revenue for the information protection and control (IPC) market to grow from $765 million in 2006 to $3.2 billion in 2011, representing a 33% compound annual growth rate. Reconnex’s gateway-based technology perfectly compliments McAfee’s existing host based data protection solution and will position McAfee securely in this space.”
Reconnex’s products align with McAfee’s vision to provide a complete data protection and compliance solution to its customers, meeting the significant demand for adaptive data protection. With more than 60 million nodes managed by McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator® (ePO™), McAfee can bring automated, centrally managed and adaptive protection to its existing customer base and further help users enhance the value of their current investments.
“As a joint customer of both McAfee and Reconnex, we believe the combination of their technologies will significantly benefit our network security operations,” said Joshua Davis, director of Information Security and Compliance at Qualcomm Incorporated. “Managing our system network protection under one management console will provide us a more comprehensive view into our security infrastructure.”
“We expect this acquisition to help McAfee solve the bigger, tougher data protection problems inhibiting current DLP deployments and will result in tremendous opportunities for our collective customers and partners,” said John Peters, chief executive officer of Reconnex. “Our technology helps businesses answer the two fundamental questions of what to protect and from whom. McAfee will be better equipped to help organizations address the complexity and time involved in the deployment and management of data protection.”
Reconnex has solved the current problems with DLP through innovative learning technology that indexes, classifies and understands the context of all content within or as it leaves an organization. Reconnex’s “knowledge mining” capability helps businesses tackle the fear of the unknown. Businesses don’t need to know what they should protect, because the technology can help them find, analyze and classify their data.
The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008. McAfee anticipates that following the closing, Reconnex’s technologies will be incorporated under McAfee’s Data Protection product business unit, headed by Gerhard Watzinger.
For additional information, please reference http://www.mcafee.com/enddataanxiety.
Tags: acquisition, Automate, IDC, McAfee, protection, ReconnexRelated posts
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