Under the IT security merger, which is effective immediately, Finjan will maintain a development centre and operations in Netanya, Israel, whilst the company's US operation - Finjan Software - will remain an independent company and retain its malware detection intellectual property.

M86 Security was created a year ago with the merger of Marshal and 8e6. In March of this year, the combined entity acquired behavioural malware detection company Avinti and has reportedly been on the acquisition trail since that announcement.

Plans call for M86 to merge Finjan's malicious code research centre (MCRC) operation into M86 Security Labs, creating a comprehensive email and web threat research organisation.

Announcing the deal, John Vigouroux, M86 Security's CEO, said that, with M86's complementary email security and reporting products - and worldwide distribution - "we anticipate a broad opportunity for Finjan's enterprise-class Web security solutions to existing and new customers".

Bruce Green, M86 Security's president, was quoted this morning by the V3 newswire as saying is firm's strategy has been to focus on the secure gateway market.

M86, he said, looked at building its own functionality, but the development process would have taken too long, which is why his company started talking to Finjan.

"It will be the second half of 2010 before the security is really integrated, but we can hit the ground running now", he said, adding that Finjan's real-time content inspection and code analysis technology will be positioned as M86's high-end enterprise secure web gateway.