Cloud Antivirus Vendor Immunet Acquired by Sourcefire

Network security solutions provider Sourcefire acquired young antivirus vendor Immunet in order to expand the company's security portfolio into the cloud.

Immunet was founded in 2008 by former Symantec executives Oliver Friedrichs and Alfred Huger, together with Cloudmark's former director of emerging technologies Dr. Adam O'Donnell.

The company focused on the new cloud-based anti-malware model and produced a lightweight companion antivirus called Immunet Protect which also sported a free version.

In March last year, Immunet and Sourcefire announced a partnership that involved an exchange of technologies between their products.

Immunet integrated Sourcefire's entire database of malware signatures into its cloud platform and the popular open source ClamAV antivirus engine into Immunet Protect.

In exchange, Sourcefire received the rights to distribute a free re-branded version of Immunet Protect as ClamAV for Windows.

It seems this successful collaboration between the two companies sparked Sourcefire's interest into Immunet's cloud technology.

Creators of the Snort network intrusion prevention system and sponsors of the ClamAV project, with this acquisition, Sourcefire can now provide a complete endpoint protection solution to its customers.

"This acquisition enables Sourcefire to accelerate our cloud initiatives and provides significant value to customers by protecting them against advanced client-side attacks," said Sourcefire CEO John Burris.

"Immunet's technologies build upon Sourcefire's reputation for providing customers with innovative solutions that protect them from the latest threats," he added.

As part of the deal, all of Immunet's full time employees will join Sourcefire's Office of the CTO. Immunet's founders Oliver Friedrichs, Alfred Huger and Adam O'Donnell will continue with the team.

"While this event means that Immunet as a separate company no longer exists, the heart and soul of our great product will endure and continue to grow as a very important and well supported group within Sourcefire," wrote Immunet's CEO Oliver Friedrichs in a blog post.

"After growing to over 750,000 users in just over a year, we have reached a stage in our company’s life where we needed to put our pedal on the gas and spread Immunet to the entire world," he noted.