Oracle said it will buy Secerno, a provider of database firewall software, to help customers protect their sensitive business data and comply with regulatory compliance standards.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but company officials said the transaction should close by the end of June.
“Secerno’s products are expected to expand Oracle’s portfolio of security solutions to ensure data privacy, protect against insider threats, and enable regulatory compliance,” Vipin Samar, vice president of Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) database security group, wrote in a letter to both companies’ customers.
“Secerno adds a database firewall to Oracle’s solutions for privileged user control, transparent data encryption, data classification, auditing, monitoring, and data masking, allowing customers to deploy reliable data security solutions that do not require any changes to existing applications, saving time and money,” he added.
Independent database security software developers have become a much-sought-after commodity in recent years as large enterprise software vendors continue to collect bits and pieces of the best technology available to round out their cornerstone middleware and on-demand software portfolios.
In November, IBM paid $225 million to acquire Guardium, a privately held database security software developer that competed with the likes of Secerno and Imperva.
“There is a growing need for DAM [database activity monitoring] and DBF [database firewall] solutions, which Oracle could no longer ignore,” Rob Rachwald, Imperva’s director of security strategy, told InternetNews.com.
“The Secerno acquisition is a direct response to increased customer demand,” he said. “Oracle, IBM and Imperva now represent the main players in database security.”
Oracle shares closed off $0.84 a share, or 4 percent, to $22.35 in Thursday trading.
Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.