IBM is allegedly splashing a reported US$100m on buying incident response outfit Resilient Systems.

Rumors of the deal were whispered by "persons with knowledge of the matter" to biz news website Xconomy.

Founded in 2010 as Co3 Systems, Massachusetts-based Resilient was set up by serial acquisition target John Bruce (alumnus of Quickcomm, acquired by Vodafone; Authentica, sold to EMC; and Counterpane, borged by BT) and Ted Julian (formerly of Application Security).

If it's an acqui-hire, though, the prize in Resilient would be security veteran Bruce Schneier, who is the company's CTO.

Big Blue and Resilient were already working together, with Resilient using IBM's InterConnect 2016 event to demonstrate integration of its incident response platform with IBM's QRadar X-Force.

Resilient recently added extra heads in Europe to chase growth in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and at the time, claimed global revenue growth of 350 per cent (without putting a figure to its revenue).

If the rumoured deal goes ahead, it would be IBM's second security acquisition in 2016. In January, Big Blue slurped German fraud-detection business Iris Analytics.

Spokespeople for IBM and Resilient Systems were not available to comment. ®