Trend Micro Acquires Kelkea

Financial terms were not released, but security firm Trend Micro, based in Cupertino, Calif., said it planned to offer Kelkea's current services under the Kelkea brand, and would continue to support the company's customers. Over the next 12 months, however, Trend Micro planned to develop new products for corporate customers and Internet service providers.

Dave Rand, Kelkea chairman, founder and chief executive, has been named chief technologist of Internet content security for Trend Micro.

Kelkea, based in San Jose, Calif., provides a service called "IP filtering," which is a process for identifying the sources of security threats, such as spam, and then blocking incoming communications from those IP, or Internet protocol, addresses.

The Kelkea service includes maintaining a database of history and statistics on more than 1.5 billion IP addresses in order to determine whether they pose risks. As a result, the Kelkea service is also used to defend against phishing, and more sophisticated attacks, called "pharming," which target the Internet infrastructure.