EMC brings NetWitness into RSA fold

EMC has agreed to acquire monitoring and analysis firm NetWitness as it looks to bolster its security offerings against advanced threats.

The deal officially closed on 1 April for an undisclosed fee, bringing NetWitness under the umbrella of RSA - EMC's security division.

"The intensity and sophistication of advanced adversaries and zero day malware challenge every organisation to rethink traditional approaches to network security," said Tom Heiser, president of RSA.

"NetWitness' unique network security analysis capabilities extend RSA's solutions for managing security risk and compliance across both physical and virtual environments."

NetWitness has now become part of RSA's Advanced Security Management Solutions unit.

"EMC and NetWitness share a complementary vision for the future of security management, work with the same types of industry-leading customers, and have a respect for each other's cultures of innovation and growth," said Amit Yoran, chief executive (CEO) of NetWitness.

"Together, we have an opportunity to further strengthen our leadership position in network security analysis by creating new, integrated products and capabilities to solve our customers' most complex security challenges."

The announcement came just days after RSA revealed to analysts it used NetWitness security products to quickly identify an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), which hit the company last month.

However, whilst the NetWitness technology was able to find the attack in real time, it did not stop the APT from being successful initially.

"They obviously weren't able to stop the attack in real time, which means the signals and scores weren't high enough to cause a person to shut down the attack in real time," said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a blog post.