Storage giant EMC today said that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Silver Tail Systems, a provider of web session intelligence and behavioral analytics for fraud and cybercrime detection.
Silver Tail will operate as part of EMC’s RSA Security division, and is expected to be integrated with RSA’s Identity Protection and Verification (IPV) solutions, as well as other products in RSA’s enterprise security portfolio.
Backers of Menlo Park, California-based Silver Tail include In-Q-Tel (IQT), the not-for-profit venture capital arm of the CIA, prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures and others. In June 2011, the company announced a $20 million Series B round of funding which helped the company expand product development and continue its growth.
Silver Tail’s investors are likely enjoying a handsome payout, though terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of this year, subject to customary closing conditions.
“Silver Tail Systems’ web session intelligence is the response to this evolution in threats and fraud, using a Big Data-driven approach to gather and analyze mass quantities of information in real time and at scale to deepen visibility into web sessions and mobile traffic,” the company explained. “The information is fed into Silver Tail Systems’ behavior analysis engine to review at both user and population levels to detect anomalies, IT security threats, fraud, insider threats, business logic abuse and other malicious activity.”
Silver Tail says that its solutions are deployed in large customer environments around the world, and help to secure online banking traffic and ecommerce and government web sites and portals. Their systems monitor upwards of 330,000 clicks per second, the company said.
“The industry is well beyond the point of providing effective security using static, perimeter point tools that fail to keep up with dynamic cyber attackers,” said Art Coviello, RSA Executive Chairman and Executive Vice President at EMC. “Customers need better intelligence, analytics, and the ability to respond in real time which is a capability that Silver Tail’s products do extraordinarily well to help foil web-based attacks. Silver Tail offers proven anti-fraud solutions that complement RSA’s portfolio of risk-based and adaptive products and services.”