Foundstone Acquired by McAfee for $86 Million

McAfee, a provider of intrusion-prevention software, today announced an agreement to acquire Foundstone, a company that offers vulnerability-management applications, for $86 million in cash.

Together the companies will offer technologies to help protect IT infrastructure.

“Chief information security officers need a comprehensive view of where their risks are and business executives need to understand how those risks can translate into business impact. Foundstone enables both,” said George Samenuk, chairman and chief executive officer of McAfee.

“By combining Foundstone with McAfee’s leading intrusion prevention technology, we will offer proven solutions that deliver the best return on security investment available in managing business risk from attacks.”

About Foundstone

Foundstone is a privately held company that was founded in 1999. The company offers a combination of enterprise software, appliances, consulting services and education to help organizations protect their assets from threats.

The technology prioritizes and correlates assets, vulnerabilities and threats, and supports proactive remediation to protect against critical threats.

Foundstone has a customer base of more than 400 large enterprise customers including AT&T, McKesson, Motorola and many high-profile government agencies.

Vulnerability Markets

According to industry research firm IDC, the vulnerability management market is expected to experience increasing growth over the next few years, reaching $1.6 billion by 2008.

The most significant growth is expected during the next three years.

In its April 2004 report, “Worldwide Security Software 2004-2008 Forecast,” IDC identified Foundstone as a leader who is advancing the concepts of risk management, policy compliance and other trends.

“Foundstone allows organizations to focus their resources where they’ll have the most impact,” said George Kurtz, chief executive officer of Foundstone.

“When combined with McAfee’s market-leading intrusion prevention technologies, we’ll help customers take a risk based approach to protect their mission-critical assets and minimize business and organizational disruption from security incidents.”

McAfee expects the transaction to close in the next 60 days.