Sourcefire just bought new anti-virus program

Aug 17, 2007 14:36 GMT  ·  By

Sourcefire has been renowned for its network security products and for the information management systems as well. They've been on the IPS (Intrusion Prevention Services) market for about 3 years now, since they first introduced their "3D" (discover, determine and defend) software product suite. They also provide an open source engine, called Snort. They have recently acquired ClamAV Open Source Network Anti-Virus Project, fact that will make the company even better now, widening their product range.

Clam Anti-Virus is open software (it's free) destined to protect Unix based operating systems and it is generally used as an e-mail virus scanner. Also, ClamAV updates are distributed with no charge.

"This acquisition gives Sourcefire the ability to bring together two of the security industry's most widely adopted open source projects; Snort and ClamAV. This will not only broaden our reach, but will also allow us to extend our product family into a number of intriguing new markets" has stated Martin Roesch, Founder of Sourcefire and Creator of Snort. He continued saying that the success of the ClamAV project is a direct reflection of the talent and dedication of the founding team and the project community.

Tomasz Kojm, ClamAv Founder said that they are very excited to join Sourcefire and that they believe that this combination will allow them to deliver increased value to the open source community, as well as to Sourcefire's commercial customers.

It is great that these two have joined to make open security better since we all know how much Sourcefire has been striving on Internet defenses, ClamAv having close to 1 million unique IPs downloading their updates daily. This means it's one of the most popular open anti-viruses in the world, and one of the best, proven by the fact that people ignore inefficient products.