RUAG, a Switzerland-based firm that develops and markets civil and military technology applications for use in space, in the air and on land, has announced the sale of its cybersecurity subsidiary, Clearswift, to Minneapolis, Minnesota-based HelpSystems (itself bought by California private equity firm HGGC for $1.1 billion in 2018). RUAG is in the process of withdrawing from the cybersecurity market to focus on to focus on the aerospace market.
Reading, UK-based Clearswift was founded in 1982. It provides deep content inspection and adaptive filtering for documents within the network and at entry and exit points. This allows the system to recognize and even redact sensitive information that should not be allowed to leave. It is used by more than 1,700 organizations in over 70 countries. The firm has about 170 employees.
HelpSystems was also founded in 1982. It has more than 770 employees operating from 25 offices around the world; and has more than 17,000 customers in over 100 countries. It helps to align IT and business goals through securing, monitoring and automating processes.
“The addition of the Clearswift solutions to the HelpSystems portfolio,” said HelpSystems CEO Kate Bolseth, “will provide customers an expanded set of cybersecurity options that protect critical data and enable compliance with industry mandates such as PCI, GDPR, and HIPAA and help them stay on top of the shifting cybersecurity environment.”
“We are confident we have found the perfect home for Clearswift and believe HelpSystems will continue to drive the products and business forward,” added Clearswift managing director Ciaran Rafferty.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Clearswift will now be known as ‘Clearswift, a HelpSystems Company’.
It is HelpSystems’ second acquisition of 2019 — in February it bought the Core Security division of Irvine, Calif.-based SecureAuth Corp. It also acquired Boulder, Colorado-based Midrange Performance Group in 2018.
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Kevin Townsend is a Senior Contributor at SecurityWeek. He has been writing about high tech issues since before the birth of Microsoft. For the last 15 years he has specialized in information security; and has had many thousands of articles published in dozens of different magazines – from The Times and the Financial Times to current and long-gone computer magazines.
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