BeyondTrust acquires eEye to Create Security Powerhouse

Virtualization security vendor BeyondTrust is acquiring eEye Digital Security for undisclosed terms. The two companies have leading technology in somewhat different but complementary security market spaces. BeyondTrust plans to integrate eEye’s Retina CS Vulnerability Management and Analytics solutions with its PowerBroker family of virtualization security products. The company claims that this will be the market’s first truly context-driven security and compliance solution.

The deal is an example of how the security world is moving to integrate the physical and virtual worlds, and to offer a common set of tools that can protect both with similar practices. BeyondTrust’s headquarters will remain outside of San Diego and the combined entity will have 250 total employees and more than $70 million in annual revenues.

The BeyondTrust product line (see sample screen shot above) involves managing network and virtual machine access privileges. This is a key security component, as many recent security attacks have involved malware that escalate network privileges. If they can integrate their product lines, the two companies will combine to offer a broader range of protection against both insider and external threats, as well as improved security for mobile and cloud-based applications.

The integration isn’t going to happen overnight, of course. The combined company will take at least another quarter to put together a complete roadmap, and it will be probably year-end before any real integration of the two products can actually be available. In the meantime, there are no anticipated changes to products or pricing. Here is a sample screenshot of the eEye Retina dashboard:

The two companies have very complementary products, particularly for endpoint security. eEye, for example, sells its Blink product which creates a managed endpoint (you can watch my screencast video here). Both companies have about half of their total staff as engineers, and both also have offshore development groups in different parts of the world: BeyondTrust has teams in India and Ukraine while eEye fields developers in Romania and Halifax, Nova Scotia. All of these teams will remain in place.

Company representatives said that there is some bundling of the two product lines in the works, but no specifics have yet been announced. The executive team of the new BeyondTrust will add some of the senior eEye executives.