Citrix bolsters application security with acquisition of Teros

Following its recent acquisition of NetScaler, Citrix Systems has announced that it has completed the acquisition of California-based Teros, Inc, a privately-held provider of application security solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2000, Teros is a market share leader in the emerging Web application firewall market and has received numerous industry awards for its innovation in both Web and XML Web services security technology.

This acquisition further extends Citrix`s leadership in application delivery solutions and products that enable companies to deliver on all application types - client/server, desktop and Web - with the highest performance, lowest cost and best security possible.

Delivering secure Web applications is particularly challenging because Web vulnerabilities are generally easy to exploit, and attacks cannot be detected by traditional security products. In addition, Web applications provide direct access to some of the most sensitive and valuable data in any enterprise, including financial records, credit card numbers and customer identity information, making them especially attractive targets for hackers.

The Teros solution is a great complement to the NetScaler product line. As the market leader in Web application delivery, the NetScaler solution provides customers with a single integrated solution that dramatically improves the performance, cost and security of mission-critical Web applications. This includes defences against a wide range of application-layer threats such as denial of service and worm attacks. With more than 4 000 enterprise deployments, including the five largest sites on the Internet, the Citrix NetScaler solution already provides secure Web application delivery for millions of users worldwide. Adding the Teros technology will further extend this lead, providing Citrix customers with the industry`s broadest set of defences against Web and XML Web services threats, while solidifying Citrix NetScaler as the most secure Web application delivery solution on the market.

"Web application attacks are the most serious threat to IT security infrastructures today, putting sensitive corporate information and confidential customer data at risk. In the wake of increasingly strict government regulations worldwide, protecting applications is no longer an option," said BV Jagadeesh, group vice-president and general manager, Citrix.

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"Customers are increasingly looking to their application delivery vendors to secure against these emerging threats. Teros provides Citrix with state-of-the-art application security capabilities that further extend our leadership as the fastest, most cost-effective and secure way to deliver Web applications."

Using its award-winning Deep Stream Inspection technology, the Teros solution incorporates a positive security model to enforce "correct" application behaviour, automatically blocking new unknown threats in real-time without relying on a database of attack signatures that must be constantly updated. It also defends against all types of emerging Web security threats, including cross-site scripting, data theft, forceful browsing, command injection, form field manipulation, cookie poisoning and XML tampering.

Citrix will immediately begin selling and supporting the complete Teros application security product line, which will be re-branded as the Citrix NetScaler Application Firewall. In addition to delivering standalone Web application security solutions, Citrix intends to deliver the Teros technology as an integrated software module for the Citrix NetScaler application delivery system in 2006.

"We are extremely impressed by the Citrix team and are convinced that this combination will be a huge hit in the marketplace," concludes Bob Walters, president and chief executive officer for Teros, Inc.