CA has bought IDFocus, a seller of identity management software.

The small Palo Alto, California, company develops software that controls who can get access to corporate IT resources, and counts Converse, Chevron Texaco and Lloyds among its customers.

CA announced the acquisition Tuesday, without disclosing how much it had paid for the company.

IDFocus' ACE software will be rebranded and sold as part of CA's Identity Management software.

The software will give CA customers a better way of controlling access to systems and better tools for documenting compliance to government regulations, CA said. In particular, ACE will help Identity Management users do a better job of blocking staffers from getting access to inappropriate IT resources, such as keeping system administrators out of payroll database records, for example. In industry parlance, this capability is called segregation of duties (SoD).

Founded in 1997, IDFocus employs a staff of less than 10.