Symantec moves into compliance

Antivirus giant Symantec has bought an application management company in a bid to boost its sales of compliance offerings.

Relicore, which makes software that tracks changes to applications in data centres and servers, is being bought for an undisclosed amount.

In a statement, Kris Hagerman, a senior vice president for Symantec, said: "The application and server environment in most enterprises is growing and changing so fast, it has become dizzyingly complex. It has never been more important for IT organisations to understand what is in their data centres – and control it."

At the same time IT security company SafeNet has made a cash offer of £86.1m for nCipher, a UK-based cryptography company.

US-based SafeNet is to bid for a 51.8 per cent share in the company to bolster its own encryption technology.

In a company statement, SafeNet said the acquisition would strengthen the its position in markets such as data protection, payments systems and identity management.