CA technologies sold off its Internet security business unit to the venture capital firm Updata Partners, which formed a new company called Total Defense that officially opens its doors Monday. Total Defense will focus on selling malware protection and intrusion prevention technology to both the consumer and business markets.
Total Defense begins with a base of 4 million consumer and 60,000 business customers and a network of 5,000 partners from when it was a unit of CA.
"It was a business of some heft and some scale and an interesting platform from which to build," says Paul Lipman, CEO. However, CA spun the security unit off because it wasn’t a "strategic fit" with CA’s main business of enterprise technology and, more recently, virtualization and cloud computing.
However, Updata clarified in a May 14 release announcing the purchase from CA that the deal does not affect CA’s larger enterprise security business, which is focused primarily on identity and access management software. The terms of the deal between CA and Updata were not disclosed.
Total Defense will concentrate on three main areas, Lipman says. First will be software to block malware from infecting computers or networks. Malware is disguised as legitimate software that infects computers through email or a Web browser, and can steal sensitive files or personal information like credit card numbers. The second area of focus is host intrusion prevention systems, which monitor network traffic to detect and block malicious activity. The third area is to improve the customer experience.
