Google acquires security firm Impermium with Indian connection

Google has acquired a three-year-old security firm Impermium with two Indian Co-founders – Vish Ramarao and Naveen Jamal. It has offices in Banglore and California.

The acquisition has been revealed by Impermium’s CEO and another Co-Founder, Mark Risher, who wrote in post on website that by joining Google, its team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world.

“When we founded Impermium three years ago, our mission was to help rid the web of spam, fraud, and abuse. As sites gain in popularity, criminals and miscreants are never far behind, and Impermium has worked hard to defend some of the largest and fastest-growing sites,” he said, “

Impermium had received $9 million in funding from a host of venture firms including Accel Partners, AOL Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. Google has not disclosed the terms of its deal with Impermium.

Risher said the company had built a number of services that worked as a risk-determination system, which could help identify when an account had been compromised. The system calculates the risk from parameters like where you accessed the account from, the device software and historical usage pattern of the links you’re posting.

He said that security is always a balance between convenience and safety. And a complete overhaul (of the password system) becomes difficult.

“Google talked about an RFID ring that you would wear and which would transfer a secure certificate. Yes it would work but it would be a hassle and everybody would have to buy a reader. It’s not going to happen overnight.”