The official price of the Guardium acquisition was undisclosed, although rumours in the press have pegged it at $225 million.
Guardium's products cover multiple functional areas. They can audit and report on database activities, monitor and enforce policies for database security and change control, and assess vulnerabilities in database systems.
Guardium also sells products that automatically locate, classify and secure sensitive information.One of the products that Guardium sells is called S-GATE, which manages the access of privileged users to the database, based on detailed controls.
Guardium, originally started in Israel in 2002, but subsequently relocated to Waltham, Ma., has experienced some notable customer wins lately. McAfee signed Guardium to track and monitor all access to cardholder data on its systems. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank now uses Guardium software, and so does the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
The Guardium security acquisition will fold into IBM's business analytics portfolio, and will also integrate with its Information Management Software portfolio, IBM said.
This is the latest security-focused acquisition for IBM, which also purchased Internet Security Systems in 2006, and snapped up Ounce Labs this July. The latter provides software that tests enterprise source code. Other security acquisitions in the past few years have included Consul Risk Management, and Watchfire.