Breach Security, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Thinking Stone Ltd., the leading provider of services and enhancements for the ModSecurity web application firewall.

ModSecurity is the most widely deployed web application firewall in the world with more than 10,000 deployments. It began as an open source project written by Ivan Ristic, a world-recognized authority in Apache Security, who will join Breach Security as a Senior Executive.

As the Chief Evangelist of the combined companies, Ristic will focus on extending Breach Security’s security application solutions and the continuous improvement of the ModSecurity open source offerings.

Ivan has the following to say in his bog announcement:

So much good is going to come out of this:

• I am going to continue to work on ModSecurity, now able to spend more time on the technical aspects of the project.
• There is going to be another developer assigned to work full time on ModSecurity.
• Yet another full time position will be created to to expand the documentation and interact with the community.

Breach Security are going to bring their web application security expertise to the table. While I expect for their entire organisation to become involved with the ModSecurity community in one form or another, there are also going to be several immediate benefits:

• ModSecurity Console, limited to supporting three remote sensors, is going to be made free for a limited time.
• Breach Security are going to design a core ModSecurity rule set and make it a part of the official distribution.

So not only is ModSecurity for Apache going to remain an open source product, but a large amount of resources is going to be invested into it to make sure the community is supported and the development accelerates.

Please excuse the spelling but this is a direct quote from the blog.