McAfee buys data leakage firm

in brief Security vendor McAfee has revealed plans to acquire Reconnex, a company that specialises in data leakage prevention, which is the second such firm it has acquired in as many years.

McAfee claimed the technology helps define what information needs to be protected without prior investigations into data stores across the network. The company will spend US$46 million on the acquisition.

"Today's DLP solutions take too long to deploy and obtain results," said Dave DeWalt, CEO and president of McAfee said in a statement. "With the pending acquisition of Reconnex, McAfee expects to redefine the entire data protection market."

McAfee's first segue into the DLP market occurred in February 2007 when it bought Onigma, now called DLP Host, which acts as a server log to monitor data activity, centrally control security policies, and block sensitive data transfers.