M86 Security has announced the acquisition of cloud-based Web security provider Finjan. The vendor's products and technology will expand M86's portfolio of Web and messaging security solutions.

M86 Security is a relatively new company formed last November through the merge of UK-based Web security vendor Marshal and US Web security appliance manufacturer 8e6 Technologies. It was initially called, rather uninspired, Marshal8e6, but for branding reasons, the name was later changed to the shorter M86 Security.

M86 further expanded in April 2009 with the acquisition of behavioral-analysis technology developer Avinti, which at the time commercialized its own e-mail security solution. In the same month, M86 signed up John Vigouroux as their new chief executive officer. Mr. Vigouroux previously served as CEO at Finjan, a San Jose-based provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) security solutions.

In addition, Werner Thalmeier, Finjan's former VP of product management also joined M86 more recently, in a similar position. Putting all this into perspective suggests that a good level of compatibility existed between the two companies even before this acquisition was decided.

"The acquisition of Finjan supports our strategy to become the recognized leader in comprehensive inbound and outbound content security," said John Vigouroux. "With their real-time code analysis and our behavior-based malware detection, M86 now offers industry-leading threat protection technologies on both the Web and Email, and can provide an effective way to enable these technologies on appliances, software, or in the cloud," he explained.

The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but Finjan’s security labs and Malicious Code Research Center will be merged into M86 Security Labs. However, Finjan's development center in Netanya, Israel, will be maintained. Through the deal, M86 also obtains a license to Finjan's patents.

Cloud-based security seems to be in high demand. Last week, we reported that Cisco revealed its plans to acquire ScanSafe, a pioneer of SaaS Web and messaging security technology. Earlier, in August, McAfee made a similar move by acquiring MX Logic after last October, Symantec snatched MessageLabs.