Aliso Viejo-based business software maker Quest Software Inc. marked another notch in its push into security software last week.
The company bought Morrisville, N.C.-based e-DMZ Security LLC, a privately held maker of security software for corporate networks.
Terms of the deal—presumably small—weren’t disclosed.
The buy is part of a series of acquisitions, investments and partnerships by Quest in the past nine months to pick up security-related technologies and roll them into its product lineup.
E-DMZ’s software controls user access to sensitive data and audits usage to meet internal security and external compliance requirements.
Quest said it plans to fold e-DMZ’s technology into its lineup of security products, which the company calls “one identity solution.”
Software from Quest builds on programs by Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and others by making them more efficient.
The company has yearly sales of about $770 million and is the largest publicly traded software company in the county with a market value of $2.4 billion last week.
Several a Year
Quest typically makes several small acquisitions each year.
Chairman and former chief executive Vinny Smith heads up the company’s strategic buying. He turned over daily operations to current Chief Executive Doug Garn more than two years ago.
Quest’s security software suite aims to help make corporate networks more secure and help companies verify to auditors and others that they’re protecting them.
Companies “not only have to be concerned with outside security threats, but also with risks related to internal threats, particularly those employees who have access to the most sensitive data and a broad range of resources,” Garn said.
The company has been making strategic investments and buys in the fragmented security software industry for the past few months.
In January, Quest took an undisclosed minority stake in Irvine security software startup SecureAuth Corp.
SecureAuth has raised some $11 million to date, mostly from private equity firms and individual investors.
The startup’s namesake software verifies the identities of people in a company who are allowed to have access to physical and virtual networks.
The software acts like a “two-way handshake” that ties the user to a particular device on the network.
Other Deals
In January, Quest also took part in a $9 million investment round of venture capital and other financing for Boulder, Colo.-based Symplified Inc., a maker of Internet-based software that helps corporations manage who signs into their cloud computing networks.
Symplified has raised some $19 million to date.
In July, Quest acquired Germany’s Völcker Informatik AG, a privately held maker of software that helps manage security, access and identity verification for corporations.
Earlier this month, Quest teamed with Sunnyvale-based Yubico Inc. to make a specialized USB key that allows users to sign onto a network or a Web-based software program.
The Yubikey, as the product is called, is a thumb drive loaded with Quest’s authentication software.
It gets inserted into the USB port of any computer and generates a onetime password.
Quest Deals
- Feb. 14: acquired North Carolina’s e-DMZ Security
- Jan. 27: investment in Irvine’s SecureAuth
- Jan. 5: investment in Colorado’s Symplified
- 2010: acquired Germany’s Volcker Informatik
