MUMBAI: Symantec Corp. today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire WholeSecurity, Inc., a behavior-based security and anti-phishing technology provider.
Whole Security's technology analyzes the characteristics and actions of viruses, worms and other malicious code to offer real-time protection against these threats without the need for traditional security signatures. The transaction is expected to close in October.
"WholeSecurity provides industry leading protection from phishing attacks,
one of the fastest growing threats to online transactions, such as banking,
e-commerce, and auctions," said Enrique Salem, senior vice president,
Symantec Security Products and Solutions. "In addition, WholeSecurity's
family of solutions provides critical behavior-based security technology
that we expect to be a core component of Symantec's baseline consumer
security and enterprise desktop solutions."
Behavior-based security technology identifies online threats such as worms,
viruses, Trojan horses, keystroke loggers, and phishing sites by their
actions and characteristics. WholeSecurity's Confidence Online analyzes
the behavior exhibited by these threats against hundreds of detection
modules to determine whether the active processes or web sites are safe or
malicious.
This technology can immediately detect and mitigate unknown
threats by their behavior without traditional signatures or patches thereby
protecting users against zero-day attacks.
WholeSecurity's patent-pending behavior-based technology addresses
applications ranging from browser-based phishing detection and notification
to on-demand delivery of malicious code detection.