Entrust Datacard, founded in 1969 and headquartered in Minnesota, announced today that it is making a strategic investment in CensorNet and acquiring the SMS Passcode business from CensorNet (originally a Danish company). Entrust Datacard is a strong brand in IAM, with card and certificate issuance, and financial and government sector business.
CensorNet was founded in 2007 in the UK. Their original product was a secure web gateway. It now includes multi-mode in-line and API-based CASB service. It also has an email security service, which utilizes machine learning algorithms to scan email looking for potential malicious payloads. Entrust Datacard already has substantial capabilities in the adaptive and multi-factor authentication areas, and the SMS Passcode product line will add to that. With this investment and acquisition, Entrust Datacard plans to move beyond digital transformation to realize continuous authentication and enhance its e-government offerings.
The results of the acquisition will be reflected in product roadmaps, likely starting in 2019. Entrust Datacard products and services will continue to handle initial authentication, and CensorNet’s capabilities will be able to add user activity monitoring through the CASB piece. The integration of identity-linked event data from CensorNet CASB will help security analysts to know, for example, which files users are moving around, and who and what are users emailing. This functionality will help administrators reduce the possibility of fraud and data loss.