McAfee has added another piece to its enterprise
security strategy with the acquisition of patch-management provider
Citadel Security Software.
Best known for its antivirus and intrusion prevention
technologies, McAfee is looking to take an even larger share of the
desktop security market with the £30m purchase.
Citadel has a suite of vulnerability management, remediation and
endpoint security offerings. Hercules, its flagship
patch-management solution, provides automated patch distribution
and installation across enterprise networks. The company was one of
the pioneers of the patch management concept, but as major vendors
such as Microsoft, Oracle and others have become more efficient and
predictable in their patch release and installation methods, such
systems have become less vital.
Still, many large enterprises and government organisations rely
on patch-management tools to ensure that users' machines are up to
date and to get detailed reports of the progress of patching
efforts. Other suppliers, including PatchLink, Altiris, BigFix and
Shavlik Technologies, face similar challenges, and many industry
observers have said that the space is ripe for consolidation.
On-demand vulnerability assessment services, such as those offered
by Qualys, have also been posing a challenge to agent-based
offerings.
In a recent interview, Patrick Clawson, CEO of PatchLink,
acknowledged the hurdles that standalone patch-management solutions
must overcome, and said that his plan is to leverage the company's
presence on millions of desktops to perform other functions.
"Patching doesn't stay as a standalone in the future. It needs
to be part of something else," Clawson said. "We want to keep a
common front-end and consolidate the reporting and dashboard. We
want to make the agent more dynamic to help customers with
compliance reporting and other issues they face. Three years from
now, we should have several products under one hood."
That's exactly the approach that McAfee is taking with the
Citadel purchase. The company has its agents on tens of millions of
desktops and adding Citadel's technology to the mix will enable the
company to offer enterprises centralised management of assessment,
remediation, antivirus and other host-based security in one
package.
In addition to the £30m in cash, McAfee will reimburse Citadel
£2m in working capital.