If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em
Proving that the combination of pen and checkbook is mightier than the sword, RSA Security announced the acquisition of PassMark Security for approximately $45 million dollars (far less than RSA’s acquisition price for Cyota).
The acquisition will bring together the top two multi-factor and risk-based authentication vendors serving the financial services space. While both RSA/Cyota and PassMark have very strong solutions, neither has a complete package – this merger should bring together the best parts of each company to make an unbeatable solution.
As for timing, this may be a bad time for an acquisition as all US financials to comply with the FFIEC Multi-Factor authentication guidance by the end of the year. If RSA is unable to integrate quickly, there may be enough chaos to drive many of their potential customers into the arms of their competition.
This might be a good time to let both products carry forward without making any major changes . . . at least until the banks have chosen and deployed their solution of choice. Integration and deployment of a common platform could be presented as a version upgrade in the future.
Only time will tell.
