Raytheon Acquires Cybersecurity Vendor Pikewerks

Defense and aerospace systems vendor Raytheon has acquired cybersecurity vendor Pikewerks in an effort to add to Raytheon’s capabilities to defend against sophisticated threats facing customers in the intelligence, defense and commercial sectors, the companies announced Monday.

Raytheon did not disclose the terms, but the company said the deal would not “materially” impact its company sales or earnings per share in the fourth quarter of 2011 or fiscal year 2012. This is the ninth cybersecurity-related acquisition Raytheon has made since 2007.

Among Pikewerks’ products are Electronic Armor, an anti-exploitation software tool that protects executable files, and Second Look, a software capability for live forensic analysis of operating systems. Pikewerks, based in Madison, Alabama, also has several kernel-level engineers focused on the Linux operating system, Raytheon said in a press release.

Pikewerks’ founder and President Sandy Ring and CEO Michael Ring will remain with the company, Raytheon said.

Pikewerks has announced U.S. Army and Air Force contracts in recent months. In September, the company announced that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had extended funding for Pikewerks’ work on the agency’s Dark Droid project, an effort to improve security in the Android mobile operating system.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant’s e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.