Symantec Acquires IM Security VendorSymantec Acquires IM Security Vendor

Symantec said Tuesday that it will acquire privately-held IMlogic to beef up its security and management of instant messaging. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The two have a history of cooperation, ranging from Symantec's participation in IMlogic's IM Threat Center to already-integrated products.

"In a lot of ways, our research teams were have been working together for some time, especially on blended threats," said Francis deSouza, chief executive of Waltham, Mass.-based IMlogic.

"Our customers have been dealing with more real-time threats," noted Enrique Salem, senior vice president of security products for Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec. "And they were starting to get worried about the escalation in how malicious those threats were becoming. IMlogic was the best [IM security] company out there."

As soon as the acquisition is finalized -- Salem estimated that it would be in February after the necessary regulatory approvals were granted -- IMlogic's threat analysts would begin to contribute to Symantec's Security Response effort, which feeds intelligence and alerts to companies via services such as DeepSight Threat Management System. The existing integration of IM Manager and Enterprise Vault will be expanded, said the executives, with additional IMlogic technology once the deal's finalized.

Symantec's consumer security line-up will also reap benefits from the acquisition of IMlogic, Salem said, with IM security provisions added to end-user products sometime during 2006.

The planned acquisition is the latest in a line that includes the $370 million purchase of e-mail security vendor Brightmail in 2004 and the $11 billion buy-out of Veritas, a deal which closed in July, 2005.

Earlier Tuesday, IMlogic touted a doubling of the number of seats managed by its IM security products, and warned that threats against public instant messaging networks had soared more than 800 percent in December compared to the same month last year.

Symantec closed Tuesday at $17.49, down a penny; shares were flat in after-hours trading.