IT security firm
Marshal8e6 is buying US behavioural analysis start-up
Avinti.
No financial details have been disclosed, but the acquisition is
aimed at bolstering Marshal8e6's ability to detect blended e-mail
and web threats.
Blended threats make up 42% of spam and this is likely to
increase and mature in the next year, said Bradley Anstis, director
of technical strategy at Marshal8e6.
"This type of spam is getting increasingly difficult to detect
and we aim to head off this evolving threat with Avinti
technology," he said.
According to Anstis, most organisations have well-protected
e-mail gateways but less effective defences around web gateways,
which is where the threat has moved.
Marshal8e6 plans to release the first Avinti-integrated products
in August that will analyse the behaviour of all links within
e-mails in a virtual environment.
"E-mail containing links that behave suspiciously within a test
virtual environment will be blocked to prevent web-based
infections," Anstis said.
The behaviour-based approach does not rely on malware signatures
and can therefore provide protection against unknown threats and
malware variants.
This acquisition follows the November 2008 merger of UK-based
email and web security company Marshal and US-based
8e6 Technologies, a provider of URL filtering technology.