BALTIMORE, Md. -- SafeNet (Nasdaq: SFNT), a leading global provider of Internet security technology that is the de facto standard in the VPN industry, today announced a joint development and marketing agreement with Raqia Networks. Under the agreement, SafeNet has also made a minority investment in Raqia and the two companies will link together their market-leading silicon technologies to create the industry's most secure and comprehensive systems-on-chip, co-processors, and accelerator cards. According to Anthony Caputo, Chairman and CEO of SafeNet, "Raqia's technology fits beautifully with our VPN offering, and opens up new and expanded revenue opportunities. Our initial product effort, now in prototype form, is a plug-in board integrating VPN and intrusion detection, and containing both SafeNet and Raqia chips. The combination of our technologies will create a comprehensive solution for a range of networking applications, allowing manufacturers to create multi-function security appliances while reducing costs. We also intend to cross license technology to create a single chip with SafeNet and Raqia technology completely integrated." Raqia Networks' ReGXP2G processor is the industry's first "Regular Expression Processor" implementation in silicon for use in key networking functions such as intrusion detection, virus scanning, firewalls, load balancing, and content-based switching. This technology, combined with SafeNet's VPN and security silicon, will create an unprecedented offering for security appliance vendors, who will be able to efficiently combine all security functions within their product, allowing the compute-intensive security applications to be handled in silicon. This combination results in high capacity, high performance chips that can be used in one appliance, turning that appliance into a high-speed, multi-function device. Raqia Networks Inc. SafeNet Inc.