CyberGuard Makes Offer For Secure Computing

Network security vendor CyberGuard Corp. said Monday it has made an offer to acquire Secure Computing Corp.

The acquisition will be a one-for-one stock exchange based on the companies' July 9 closing stock price, CyberGuard said in a statement. According to the statement, the swap would represent a 22% premium for each Secure Computing share. The deal will be valued at just under $300 million.

Secure Computing manufactures a line of high-end firewall information-security appliances and authentication and Web-filtering products.

The acquisition would be CyberGuard's fourth in about a year. Last year, CyberGaurd acquired NetOctave, a maker of security chips and VPN accelerator hardware, and SnapGear, which made embedded Linux and VPN/firewall appliances. Most recently, CyberGuard acquired PC security vendor Webwasher Software, most known for its Windows-based content security software.

Secure Computing provides numerous information security applications, including identity-management and authentication software and hardware, firewalls, and VPN gateways.