IBM has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Israel based Trusteer, a endpoint cybercrime prevention solutions provider that helps to protect organizations against financial fraud and advanced security threats.
The acquisition of Trusteer advances the investment IBM is making in cloud-delivered software and services however financial terms were not disclosed. Trusteer was founded in 2006 by Mickey Boodaei, Rakesh Loonkar, Amit Klein, Shmulik Regev and Eldan Ben-Haim and is backed by U.S. Venture Partners and Shlomo Kramer.
As part of this announcement, IBM is forming a cybersecurity software lab in Israel that will bring together more than 200 Trusteer and IBM researchers and developers to focus on mobile and application security, advanced threat, malware, counter-fraud, and financial crimes. This lab is an addition to IBM’s existing research and development facilities in Israel.
With offices located in Boston and Tel Aviv, Israel, Trusteer helps hundreds of organizations including many financial institutions protect Web applications, employee and customer computers and mobile devices from threats. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly efficient in creating and deploying attacks to bypass existing security controls.
Trusteer software can identify security threats that can be missed by traditional security software. For example, to help ensure that banking customers can safely transfer money on a mobile device, Trusteer software performs detection of malware that can infect a smartphone, enabling the bank to take steps to prevent fraudulent behavior and account takeover before the transaction occurs. Seven of the top 10 U.S. banks and nine of the top 10 U.K. banks use Trusteer’s solutions to help secure customer accounts against financial fraud and cyber attacks.
“Trusteer’s expertise and superior technology in enterprise endpoint defense and advanced malware prevention will help our clients across all industries address the constantly evolving threats they are facing.Together with IBM’s capabilities in advanced threat detection, analysis and remediation, we will now be able to offer our clients several additional layers of defense against sophisticated attackers,” said Brendan Hannigan, General Manager, Security Systems Division, IBM.
“The way organizations protect data is quickly evolving. As attacks become more sophisticated, traditional approaches to securing enterprise and mobile data are no longer valid. Trusteer has helped hundreds of large banks and organizations around the world defeat thousands of sophisticated attacks using innovative solutions that combine intelligence, cloud, mobile and desktop technologies,” said Mickey Boodaei, CEO, Trusteer.