CP Secure caught in Netgear

Networking vendor Netgear has agreed to acquire anti-virus streaming appliance specialist CP Secure for up to $17.5m, (£9.4m).

CP Secure was founded six years ago by chief executive and former Trend Micro chief architect Shuang Ji. The company's security offerings focus on protecting businesses against web and email based malware threats. Its CSG line of products offers email security, network protection and web filtering.

Netgear has stumped up $14m in cash to acquire CP Secure, which will receive a further $3.5m after the acquisition closes if certain specified objectives are achieved. The deal is now subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to go through in Q4 2008. At that point Shuang Ji will assume the role of Netgear's vice president of engineering for security products.

As part of the deal, Netgear will acquire a team of CP Secure employees. This will include its engineering centre in Nanjing with more than 40-strong engineering team, pending patents, customer base, as well as current products and those in development. The networking vendor has targeted the release of a line of appliances incorporating CP Secure's platform for web, email and unified threat management within a year.

Netgear chief executive Patrick Lo said: “As SMBs increasingly rely on web 2.0 and email applications to conduct business with customers, partners, and vendors alike, they are increasingly seeking effective and easy-to-administer integrated solutions to safeguard their networks and applications from Internet threats and ensure business continuity.

"With an expanded security solution lineup that will incorporate CP Secure’s integrated platform, we can provide organisations with robust, comprehensive, zero-hour protection for their network, web access and email traffic. We also believe that the easy-to-deploy, easy-to-administer and real-time scanning performance features of the CP Secure solution will resonate with our target small and medium business customers.”

Shuang Ji added: “By leveraging Netgear's leading brand name and global distribution channel and supply chain relationships, we believe we will be able to offer CP Secure’s enterprise-level security features to SMBs who are exposed to the same security threats as enterprises, and can and should expect the same degree of comprehensive network protection.”