EMC buys digital security provider

EMC Corp. will acquire RSA Security Inc., a provider of technology for protecting and managing identities and digital assets, for about $2.1 billion in cash.

Through the acquisition EMC will be able to offer better security to its customers.

"Bringing RSA into the fold provides EMC with industry-leading identity and access management technologies and best-in-class encryption and key management software to help EMC deliver information lifecycle management securely," said Joe Tucci, EMC's chairman, president and CEO.

EMC of Hopkinton, Mass., has about 22,700 employees and ranks No. 61 on Washington Technology's 2006 Top 100 list of the largest federal IT contractors.

Recently General Dynamics Corp. C4 Systems unit implemented EMC Smarts as a core piece of its broadband enterprise network communications system for the Army. General Dynamics uses EMC Smarts automated analysis and impact assessment engine to ensure availability of the high-speed, mobile WIN-T communications system.

RSA of Bedford, Mass., manufactures several management and authentication products, such as its USB Authenticator 6100 device. It combines a portable plug-and-play USB device with secure storage of digital credentials on a standards-based Java platform. With RSA SecurID Passage software, the devices offer a tamper-resistant, user-authentication solution for to securely store multiple certificates, key sets, finger-based biometric templates, usernames and passwords and RSA SecurID software token seed records.