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Crypto-Consolidation: Thales Buys Vormetric

Paris-based Thales SA will pad its data protection capabilities with a $400 million acquisition of enterprise encryption company Vormetric.

Thales this week announced a definitive agreement to acquire San Jose, Calif.-based Vormetric in a deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2016.

Vormetric will be a part of the e-security portion of Thales' security business. The European company also has aerospace, space, defense and transportation business lines.

"The acquisition of Vormetric is a great opportunity to accelerate the growth of our cybersecurity activities. Combining Thales' critical IT systems protection capabilities with Vormetric's know-how in data protection will create a global leader in data security, offering comprehensive solutions for protecting enterprises against cybersecurity threats," said Patrice Caine, chairman and CEO of Thales, in a statement.

The Vormetric Data Security Platform centralizes key management and offers file-level encryption, application-layer encryption, tokenization, cloud encryption gateway and security intelligence logs. Those cryptography tools complement Thales' hardware security modules, encryption technology and digital signature technology.

According to the companies, Vormetric has about 200 employees and a current fiscal year revenue runrate of $75 million. That unit will join a Thales e-security team that consists of 540 employees in the United States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

In a letter about the merger, Vormetric President and CEO Alan Kessler told customers and partners that Thales' "significantly funded R&D" would enhance the Vormetric products.

"We look forward to developing even more valuable solutions for our customers and we will continue to invest in the strong partner ecosystem that has been such a core part of our success," Kessler wrote.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 21, 2015


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