Two security service providers for banking and other companies have joined forces.
On Wednesday, SecureWorks Inc., an Atlanta provider of intrusion prevention services, said it had purchased Lurhq Corp., a Myrtle Beach, S.C., intrusion detection provider.
The deal closed last week. SecureWorks did not say how much it paid.
Lurhq focused on detecting and addressing attacks that originate from within a bank, using methods such as looking at network activity logs.
SecureWorks offers an intrusion prevention service for detecting external attacks that are initiated through the Internet. The service is pitched mostly to banking companies with under $2 billion of assets.
As a result of the acquisition, SecureWorks now has 1,500 clients, including 1,200 financial companies. Lurhq had 170 clients, 35% percent of them large banking companies.
According to SecureWorks, the companies had just one client in common: Home Federal Bank of Knoxville, Tenn.
Executives said combining the offerings will let SecureWorks offer banks two important components of an effective security strategy.
“We will really be able to cover the entire market,” said Tony Prince, Lurhq’s founder and chief executive, who has been named SecureWorks’ executive vice president.
Not even the marketing skills of the two vendors’ employees overlapped, Mr. Prince said; SecureWorks will retain the Lurhq sales team, which will continue to focus on large companies.
All but four of Lurhq’s employees have joined SecureWorks, which now has about 200 employees.
Mike Cote, SecureWorks’ president and chief executive, said one of the main attractions of Lurhq was that he had realized his clients have “a large and growing need for log analysis services” such as the one Lurhq offered.
SecureWorks did not have such a service, and its board had determined that it needed one, he said, but developing one would have put him in competition with Mr. Prince, whom he had befriended at various conferences over the years.
“I picked up the phone and called Tony and said, ‘Look, we’re going to begin to compete more. I think it would make a lot of sense for us to have a discussion about putting the two companies together,’ ” Mr. Cote said.
