McAfee to acquire Citadel Security Software Inc.

McAfee, Inc. today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Citadel Security Software Inc. for approximately $56 million in cash, plus an estimated $4 million in working capital reimbursement.

Citadel provides leading solutions in security policy compliance and vulnerability remediation. The acquisition will add to McAfee’s suite of products that help enterprises neutralize security vulnerabilities and reduce risk, giving McAfee a broader capability for security policy compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

“Security risk management is emerging as one of our highest-growth opportunities. This acquisition will help us develop the next generation of real-world security risk management solutions that customers are demanding,” said Kevin Weiss, president of McAfee. “With the addition of Citadel, we can offer our customers the major components of vulnerability assessment, policy compliance enforcement and remediation, building on our suite of existing products, including ePolicy Orchestrator, Preventsys, Policy Enforcer and Foundstone.”

“We see companies struggle to bridge the gap between IT security and operations–such as tying compliance audits to remediation,” said Rose Ryan, analyst at IDC. “Companies should seek to improve their exposure to risks from vulnerabilities, threats and intrusions while reducing total cost of ownership by leveraging a unified security risk management architecture.”

“McAfee has a significant lead in the market with the release of the industry’s first truly integrated system security solution for the enterprise with Total Protection solutions. We believe we can considerably extend the market for Citadel’s solutions by leveraging McAfee’s 45 million desktops under management by ePolicy Orchestrator and becoming a key component of McAfee’s security risk management portfolio,” said Steven Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer at Citadel. “Together with Citadel’s compliance and remediation solutions, McAfee has an excellent opportunity to deliver unmatched security to its enterprise business users—helping them to save valuable time and money, mitigate risk and comply with corporate and government mandates.”