Weeks after two of the world’s biggest antivirus providers announced plans to merge in a $1.3 billion deal, the endpoint protection market is undergoing another round of consolidation. Carbon Black Inc. announced this morning that it’s acquired a competitor called Confer Technologies Inc. that has developed a system for protecting employee devices.

The platform provides threat detection and blocking functionality through a lightweight scanner that the startup says takes as little as a minute to install on an endpoint. Upon detecting a potential sign of malicious behavior, the agent sends information about the offending process to a remote analytics backend that can perform a more thorough check. Confer claims that the engine is capable of identifying both conventional malware strands like the recently discovered HummingBad virus and in-memory scripts specifically designed to evade traditional antivirus software.

For added measure, the analytics backend also includes a graphical interface that enables administrators to centrally investigate every endpoint breach in their organization. The functionality is designed to help IT departments understand whether a particular malware infection was caused by an isolated blunder, or indicates a more serious security issue that requires closer attention. Taken together, Confer says that the detection and diagnostics features of its platform can help a company deflect 99 percent of the attacks that target their employees’ devices.

In the wake of today’s acquisition, Carbon Black plans on integrating the outfit’s platform into its cloud-based endpoint security service. Meanwhile, Confer o-founders Paul Morville and Jeff Kraemer will be joining the company’s product and engineering teams along with most of their team. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but seeing that the startup raised $25 million from investors to date, the transaction is most likely valued in the eight figure.

Photo via Geralt