EMC has today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Silver Tail Systems, which provides real-time web session intelligence and behavioural analysis. Upon closing, Silver Tail will operate within the RSA security division and is expected to extend the capabilities of RSA’s Identity Protection and Verification (IPV) solutions, as well as other areas across RSA’s enterprise security portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2012, subject to certain closing conditions.
The rapid evolution of malware and advanced online threats has left growing numbers of online banking, ecommerce and government web sites and their customers vulnerable to attack, account takeover and fraud. In response to this evolution organisations historically have focused on building fraud detection and security strategies that try to identify what a bad transaction looks like, creating solutions that must always play catch-up to the latest threats.
Silver Tail Systems’ web session intelligence is the response to this evolution in threats and fraud, using a Big Data-driven approach to gather and analyze mass quantities of information in real time and at scale to deepen visibility into web sessions and mobile traffic. The information is fed into Silver Tail Systems’ behavior analysis engine to review at both user and population levels to detect anomalies, IT security threats, fraud, insider threats, business logic abuse and other malicious activity.
Silver Tail Systems has been recognised as a leader by prominent industry analysts for its innovative approach and disruptive technology. Silver Tail’s solutions are deployed globally in large customer environments, helping to secure online banking traffic and e-commerce and government web sites and portals. Their team has extensive experience in building high-performance solutions that provide monitoring for upwards of 330,000 clicks per second for some of the largest e-commerce and banking providers on the market today.
Within RSA, Silver Tail is expected to contribute to multiple areas across RSA’s enterprise security portfolio. Silver Tail’s products will add a disruptive fraud-fighting technology designed to install and begin providing value in a matter of days, lowering complexity and cost of ownership. In addition, it is expected Silver Tail’s core transaction and behavioral analysis technology will help further extend the security analytics capabilities across RSA’s enterprise security solutions portfolio.
