Google Acquires Account Hijacking Protection Startup Impermium

While Google shocked the world earlier this week with its announcement that it would pay $3.2 billion in cash to acquire Nest, the company has also made another acquisition—this time in the security space.

Google has quietly acquired Redwood City, California-based Impermium, a company that protects SaaS application users from account hijacking (malicious takeovers) and account compromise. The company also provides social spam protection services for blogs and websites and helps identify fraudulent account registrations.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“When we founded Impermium three years ago, our mission was to help rid the web of spam, fraud, and abuse. As sites gain in popularity, criminals and miscreants are never far behind, and Impermium has worked hard to defend some of the largest and fastest-growing sites,” Mark Risher, CEO and Co-founder of Impermium wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

“By joining Google, our team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world. With our combined talents we’ll be able to further our mission and help make the Internet a safer place,” Risher continued. “We’re excited about the possibilities.”

Impermium was founded in 2010 by Risher, a former Yahoo! “Spam Czar”, and Vish Ramarao and Naveen Jamal. Previously, the trio led the anti-spam and security group at Yahoo! Mail.

Interestingly, when visiting the company’s website using Google’s Chrome Web Browser, the site returns an invalid SSL certificate.

While Impermium may not be a household name, the company was backed by prominent investors including, including Accel Partners, AOL Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Data Collective, Freestyle Capital, Greylock Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Morado Ventures, and the Social+Capital Partnership.

Related: Google Reports Huge Drop in Hacked Gmail Accounts