Monday, 16 October 2006

McAfee Buys Leak Prevention Company, Onigma

McAfee has acquired IT security start-up Onigma for USD 20 million. Onigma produces solutions for preventing leaks from enterprises. Onigma will become McAfee’s development center in Israel, and it is now hiring to boost its staff to 40 from its current 25.

The Onigma acquisition is the third McAfee purchase of a compliance-focused security vendor in recent months. On October 3, McAfee announced its USD 60 million acquisition of Citadel Security Software, a provider of policy compliance programs. McAfee bought Preventsys, a company that specialises in automated security compliance reporting, in June.

The acquisition comes at the crossroads of controversy, as McAfee fired its president Kevin Weiss and said its chief executive George Samenuk would retire after an internal probe into the software maker's stock option practices. Former Borland CEO Dale Fuller is the new interim CEO of McAfee.