ThreatMatrix acquires Australia's TrustDefender

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 January 2012 09:52

IT Industry - Strategy

California based Internet security specialist ThreatMetrix has acquired privately held Australian company TrustDefender, a developer of secure browsing technology designed to stop man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks and provide malware protection.

The combined companies will operate under the ThreatMetrix name and will have operations in the United States, Australia and Europe. The corporate headquarters will be located in San Jose, California. Andreas Baumhof the co-founder and CEO of TrustDefender has joined ThreatMetrix as CTO. Financial details were not disclosed.

Baumhof said that the combination of the two companies would address the growing global malware threat. "In 2011 we saw a huge increase in sophisticated MitB Trojan activities supporting fraudulent transactions with stolen identities. Malware protection and fraud prevention are closely related, yet no truly integrated solutions were available in the market.

"The merger allows ThreatMetrix to address fraud prevention and malware protection as a single problem and deliver real benefits to customers at a lower cost."

TrustDefender was founded in 2006, is headquartered in Sydney and has offices in the United Kingdom, US and Asia Pacific. It claims to have developed a number of world's first technologies and to have "revolutionised the global online transaction environment with its unique memory forensics technology and tagless page fingerprint technologies." Its products are available as a managed services offering and as an in-house implementation.

Following the acquisition the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Defender Platform now comprises:

- TrustDefender ID - a cloud-based, real-time device identification service that protects companies against cybercriminals and helps validate valuable returning customers. "TrustDefender ID provides businesses with a crucial first perimeter of defence to protect online transactions, including account creation, login authentication and payment authorisation," ThreatMatrix said.

- TrustDefender Cloud - a cloud-based real-time service that helps companies protect customer data and defend against fraud, malware, MitB and Trojan attacks, and data breaches.

- TrustDefender Client - client software that mitigates the risk of hidden malware compromising authenticated sessions to steal data, identities or money. A small client component installed on end-user computers identifies and isolates malware, verifies legitimate websites, protects the online session with the business, and communicates with the business to identify potential fraud.