CA Technologies on Monday announced plans to acquire authentication vendor Arcot Systems for US$200 million, a move intended to boost its hand in cloud security. The deal is expected to close by Sept. 30, the end of CA's second quarter.
Arcot's products for add advanced authentication and fraud prevention are complementary to CA's SiteMinder portfolio of identity and access management offerings, giving customers the option of delivering authentication via software versus hardware tokens, said Dave Hansen, general manager of security, in an interview.
CA is pursuing a cloud security strategy that has three components: extending on-premises systems to cloud services; delivering security as a service; and selling security products to cloud-based vendors, according to a statement.
Arcot's products have already verified some 120 million identities, and supply fraud prevention for about 1 million credit card transactions each day, CA said. Its roughly 165 workers will join CA's security division.
This is just the latest move by CA to bolster its cloud strategy through acquisitions. Earlier this month, it scooped up 4Base Technology, a services company specializing in virtualization and infrastructure. It also purchased 3Tera, maker of a cloud application delivery platform, in February.