Security company SurfControl is looking to claim a stake in the anti-spyware market.
The London-based firm announced on Wednesday it had paid $6.8m (£3.5m) for application security company Apreo's anti-spyware technology. The technology is set to feature in SurfControl's Enterprise Threat Shield (SETS), which will go on sale in April.
"Spyware and phishing attacks are escalating in sophistication and becoming more harmful and fraudulent in nature," said Steve Purdham, chief executive officer of SurfControl. "These security threats frequently utilise multiple attack vectors to penetrate a network and propagate within an organisation. [SETS] will integrate with [our] existing intellectual property."
The SETS tool will attempt to remove spyware by updating networks and looking for malicious programs running in applications such as instant messenger. It has a centralised management and reporting facility and is said to work over business directory services Microsoft Active Directory and Novell eDirectory.
Analyst IDC has predicted that the anti-spyware market is set to grow to $305m by 2008.