Third Brigade acquires OSSEC project

Third Brigade, a host intrusion prevention software company, has acquired OSSEC, an open source, host-based IDS. The vendor said the OSSEC project will remain open source while it provides commercial support and training. Daniel Cid, the creator and primary developer of OSSEC, will work as principal researcher at Third Brigade.

OSSEC began as an open source project in 2003 and according to Third Brigade, has users in 40 countries including two of the largest U.S. commercial banks. HIDS software works on multiple platforms, including Windows, Solaris, Linux, and MacOS. Third Brigade plans to incorporate OSSEC functionality into future products.

The deal comes nearly a year after Sourcefire acquired ClamAV, another open-source security project. Sourcefire owns the rights to the open-source Snort IDS, which was created by Sourcefire founder Martin Roesch.