McAfee to acquire data-leakage firm

Security vendor McAfee has revealed plans to acquire Reconnex, a company that specializes in data-leakage prevention.

Reconnex would be the second such firm McAfee has acquired in as many years.

McAfee claimed Reconnex's 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 [data-leakage prevention] solutions take too long to deploy and obtain results," Dave DeWalt, chief executive 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 move into the DLP market occurred in February 2007 when it bought Onigma, now called DLP Host, whose technology acts as a server log to monitor data activity, centrally control security policies and block sensitive data transfers.