Aladdin Knowledge Systems was founded in 1985 by Jacob Margalit, when he was 23 years old; he was soon joined by brother Dany Margalit, who took the responsibility for product development at the age of 18, while at the same time completing a Mathematics and Computer Science degree in Tel Aviv University. In its early years the company developed two product lines, an artificial intelligence package and a hardware product to prevent unauthorized software copying, similar to digital rights management. Yanki raised just $10,000 as an initial capital for the company. The digital rights management product became a success and by 1993 generated sales of $4,000,000. The same year that company had an initial public offering on NASDAQ raising $7,900,000. In 2004 the company's shares were also listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. By 2007 the company's annual revenues reached over $105 million.
In mid-2008, Vector Capital was attempting to purchase Aladdin. Vector initially offered $14.50 per share, but Aladdin's founder Margalit refused the offer arguing that the company was worth more. Aladdin's shareholders agreed on the merger in February 2009 at $11.50 per share, in cash. In March 2009, Vector Capital acquired Aladdin and officially merged it with SafeNet.
1999 – Aladdin acquired the eSafe "content security" business of EliaShim
2000 – Aladdin acquired 10% of Comsec
2001 – Aladdin acquired the ESD assets of Preview Systems
2005 – Aladdin completed second offering – 2,000,000 shares with net proceeds of $39m
2009 – Aladdin was acquired by Vector Capital.
2010 – Aladdin was merged with Vector Capital's SafeNet.
Products
DRM
Aladdin's HASPproduct line is a digital rights management suite of protection and licensing software with 40% global market share, used by over 30,000 software publishers. It is used across many platforms. HASP, which stands for Hardware Against Software Piracy, was the company's first product and evolved into a complete digital rights management suite, that includes a software only option and a back office management application, in recent years also software as a service capability.
Internet security
In the late 1990s the company started diversifying and began offering Internet security and network security products, offering two product lines:
