f5F5 Networks is strengthening its Internet security offerings, announcing today that it is buying Tel Aviv-based Versafe in a deal of undisclosed size. Versafe’s 40 employee will remain with the company, operating out of Israel. The company’s three founders also will remain, working on the Versafe technology.

Versafe’s development team will report to Ron Talmor, vice president of product development at F5. The sales team will report to Dave Feringa, executive vice president of worldwide sales.

“The acquisition supports F5’s vision and commitment to provide our customers with secure access to data and applications from any location; from any device,” said Karl Triebes, EVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. “Web applications are under increasing attack, which can lead to the theft of intellectual property, money, sensitive data and identity. Versafe provides comprehensive, real-time detection and protection for every user, every device and every browser.”

Shares of F5, which are down about five percent this year, gained more than one percent in trading this morning. The company now employs more than 3,180.

F5 last week announced plans to open a new engineering center in Bellevue, hiring as many as 50 software engineers. In addition to security products, F5’s offerings help speed up the delivery of applications across mobile devices and the Internet. The security offerings from F5 and now Versafe help companies protect against fraud, phishing and malware threats, with Versafe co-founder Eyal Gruner noting that companies today need “a deep understanding of cyber-crime,” 

F5 wrote in a blog post.

Versafe’s technology employs its client-side visibility and logic with expert-driven security operations to ensure real-time detection of a variety of threat vectors common to web and mobile applications alike. Its coverage of browsers, devices and users is comprehensive. Every platform, every user and every device can be protected from a vast array of threats including those not covered by traditional solutions such as session hijacking.

Versafe approaches web fraud by monitoring the integrity of the session data that the application expects to see between itself and the browser. This method isn’t vulnerable to ‘zero-day’ threats: malware variants, new proxy/masking techniques, or fraudulent activity originating from devices, locations or users who haven’t yet accumulated digital fraud fingerprints.

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