Dell has reached an agreement to acquire data protection vendor Credant Technologies, saying the company will improve the manageability, reliability and security engineered into Dell's enterprise computing portfolio.

“In today’s work environment data is always in-flight –- from work being done on a local PC, being sent via email, stored on a USB drive and saved in the cloud. Each one of those experiences represents a potential security risk. As a result, businesses need a data protection strategy that is comprehensive, flexible and easy to deploy,” Jeff Clarke, president, End User Computing Solutions at Dell, said in a statement. “The Credant assets will complement and extend current Dell device security features to make Dell Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision PCs some of the world’s most secure.”

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Addison, Texas, Credant currently secures more than 2 million endpoints with customers in a variety of industries, including aerospace and defense, energy, financial services, universities, drugs and healthcare, retail and telecommunications.

The acquisition comes as no surprise, since Dell already had a long-standing joint development partnership and OEM agreement with Credant, using its technology in its Dell Data Protection|Encryption product.

This is the second security vendor acquisition in as many days. Yesterday, Blue Coat Systems Inc. announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire network security vendor Crossbeam Systems Inc.