The Islandia, New York-based systems management specialist has been relatively quiet with regards to acquisitions in recent years after it gained near-legendary status during the 1990s for acquiring competing technologies and market share.
The purchase of PestPatrol takes CA into a new area with the technology to detect and remove spyware, adware, Trojan horses and denial-of-service attack agents from individual and networked PCs.
CA said it will rename the anti-spyware technology eTrust PestPatrol and incorporate it into its eTrust Threat Management software suite, which already includes anti-spam, anti-virus, firewall, intrusion detection and web filtering technologies.
Meanwhile, PestPatrol’s Center for Pest Research, which provides free advice to computer users on how to deal with unwanted code, will be incorporated into CA’s Security Advisor Service.
The PestPatrol technology enables spyware scanning and removal to be performed over the network from a central location. The technology also enables network administrators to define rules for spyware scanning and define safe lists or exclusion files of authorized applications based on department or individual role.
