Entrust Datacard announced on Friday that the company has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Thales’s General Purpose Hardware Security Module (GP HSM) business, nCipher Security, which has been operating as a separate stand-alone business within Thales since January 2019.
Thales is divesting its nCipher GP HSM business, in accordance with Regulatory Clearances necessary to complete Thales’s forthcoming and previously-announced acquisition of Gemalto and to ensure a strong competitive market leader in the HSM market.
The transaction is subject to completion of the acquisition of Gemalto by Thales, the approval of Entrust as a suitable purchaser by the European Commission, US Department of Justice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and New Zealand Commerce Commission, and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Additional information about the acquisition will be released once the transaction is closed. The acquisition is expected to be finalized during the second quarter of this year. Financial terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.
General Purpose HSMs are a core component of Entrust Datacard’s solutions and are an underlying part of the security infrastructure of the company’s public key infrastructure (PKI) and secure socket layer (SSL) offerings.
The acquisition will allow the company to not only further extend its ability to provide its customers with solutions that meet their demand for high assurance use cases – but also address the increased demand for data security stemming from regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the electronic identification, authentication and trust services (eIDAS) regulation.
The acquisition strengthens the Entrust Datacard technology portfolio that secures data and identities across internal, cloud and hybrid networks, and from more frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. It also provides a proven, trusted platform that enhances and extends the security of applications at the heart of the digital initiatives of today and tomorrow, including the Internet of Things, digital payments, card issuance and blockchain.
“This acquisition is an excellent complement to our expertise in both cryptography and hardware and will extend our ability to meet the evolving security needs of our customers globally while allowing us to accelerate our own growth,” said Todd Wilkinson, president and CEO of Entrust Datacard. He continued, “The Thales General Purpose HSM solution, known as nCipher, has a strong market position based on a wide range of use cases, brings with it exceptional talent and offers us the ability to develop even more comprehensive solutions for our clients.”
“nCipher Security is delighted to join Entrust Datacard. There is a powerful synergy between our solutions and the combination of our organizations will accelerate innovation for our customers as they embark on initiatives such as mobility, cloud and IoT to grow their businesses and simultaneously strive to protect data and manage ever-growing cyber risk,” said Cindy Provin, chief executive officer of nCipher Security.
