INVESTMENT
Baltimore buys Canadian firm for USD42m
04-10-2000
by
Irish security firm Baltimore Technologies on Wednesday said it would pay USD42 million for Nevex, a Canadian software firm specialising in secure access management technology.
The purchase is the latest in an aggressive push by Baltimore to consolidate its position as a world-class security firm, following its USD992 million purchase of Content Technologies last month. Baltimore is racing to build a wider portfolio of security products, and the Nevex purchase offers a new key technology: authorisation and access control management services, which give companies an easier way to manage the data and applications staff are allowed to access based on business rules.
Baltimore said that this market segment -- policy-driven access and authorisation management -- is enjoying fast growth and is expected to reach USD3.5 billion by 2003.
"In the new economy, all information and content are critical and valuable assets. Every organisation needs to put in place policy-based mechanisms to securely leverage these assets as they open up their networks for e-business,"
Baltimore CEO Fran Rooney said in a statement. "The acquisition of Nevex brings cutting edge XML based secure access and authorisation management technology along with a team developers who are among the best in this field."
Investors were not immediately enthusiastic about the purchase; Baltimore was down around 4 percent on the London exchange to STG6.63 in early afternoon trading.
Based in Toronto, Nevex launched one of the first commercially available firewalls at Border Network Technologies before being acquired by Secure Computing Corporation in 1996.
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