Security and vulnerability management vendor Patchlink has merged with endpoint security provider Securewave to expand its markets into device management.

While the value of the all-stock transaction was not disclosed, Patchlink CEO Patrick Clawson said the merger will bring Patchlink's Australia and New Zealand customers up to 500,000 nodes.

Clawson said Securewave's product roadmap will be sold under the Patchlink brand and an expanded local partner network.

"Patchlink plans to integrate the companies' product roadmaps to deliver an enterprise-wide, unified management and administration console, and single end-point agent," Clawson said.

"Securewave does not have a local presence in Australia but it has a very strong partner network which will add to the existing Patchlink partner network.

"With the acquisition of Securewave, Patchlink will be able to discover what devices are connected to customer networks and what vulnerabilities exist on those devices, and provide an automated remediation workflow."

Clawson said there are no plans to cut staff or products, noting the combined company will be able to aggressively pursue financial, pharmaceutical, and government industries as both companies shared target markets.

According to Clawson, the combined company has more than 5000 enterprise customers and about 14 million end-points deployed across the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia.

PatchLink will gain 17,000 global customers along with existing local clients which includes Perpetual Funds Management, the Australian Defence Force Academy, and Kingston City Council.

Securewave's SecureEXE, in particular, is a good example of a 'whitelisting' application, an area some see as the future of software security. The software identifies authorized applications and allows only these to run, thereby excluding malware without the need for signature-based detection.

The merger is Patchlink's second acquisition this year, following the purchase of the STAT Guardian vulnerability management suite from security vendor Harris.

There has been plenty of activity in this particular market with SonicWall acquiring SSL vendor Aventail last month for $US25 million.

PatchLink has been around since 1991, and even SecureWave -- the most notable tech company to come out of Luxembourg -- was founded as long ago as 1996. The newly combined company will have 230 employees, large for a private company.