For those that read this blog for Data Security/DLP reasons, you have good reason to complain that I've been neglecting that area in favour of Identity lately. On the flip side, anyone who doesn't give crap about Data Security or DLP can tune out this time around.
Despite Matt P, Clayton and Nishant jokingly suggesting I should write for sitcoms, I'll put that career on hold for now and get back to business...although if Nishant and Paul Walker continue their thread, I could have more paraphrasing fodder :-)
On to the topic at hand...
McAfee announced late last week that they are acquiring Reconnex for $46 million USD. They acquired a few other companies (Onigma for $20 million USD and Safeboot for $350 million USD) to start themselves along the DLP track and have now filled out the portfolio with assets to address some holes in their offering. What were the holes? Data discovery and network monitoring.
The acquisition wasn't a huge surprise. Symantec have traditionally been McAfee's main competitor and happen to also be their biggest competitor in this space.
Symantec started themselves along the DLP track by acquiring Vontu for $350 million USD. Vontu's strength was in its data discovery and network monitoring capabilities. I should also mention they had lots of customers and were considered to be the market leader in DLP. They've only recently branched out into offering endpoint monitoring and control (I assume this is thanks to Symantec's development budget).
Onigma's technology was an endpoint monitoring and control product. This meant that when McAfee compared itself to Symantec, it found itself sorely lacking from an overall solution standpoint (at least from a marketing perspective). Reconnex fills the void.
Let me take Safeboot out of the picture for a minute because it doesn't compete directly with the Vontu technology. McAfee's only had to pay a fraction ($20+$46 = $66 million USD) of the amount Symantec spent ($350 million USD) to get a comparable set of products. If you do the maths, it's less than one fifth! At face value either McAfee got a steal or Symantec got screwed. To be fair to Symantec, they did have to pay a premium because they were buying "the market leader" and also the set of customers Vontu had. DLP was also a much "hotter" topic at the time (it still is, but the buzz isn't as crazy) and in case you haven't noticed the world economy is in a bit of a slump at the moment. Even after taking these factors into consideration however, I'm not sure that premium should have been 5 times the amount McAfee forked out.
Your move Symantec...which brings me back to Safeboot. Symantec announced their Endpoint Encryption offering earlier this year. In reality, this is an OEM agreement with GuardianEdge and a direct response to McAfee's Safeboot offering. I wonder how long it'll take Symantec to buy GuardianEdge now that McAfee's filled their gaping DLP hole?
Showing posts with label vontu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vontu. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Symantec announce Vontu acquisition
As usual, my travel schedule for work is really screwing with my blogging habits and keeping up to date with news. Of course, this means I'm blaming it on the market's need for Data Security solutions...which is not such a bad thing.
Symantec finally announced their acquisition of Vontu early last week. More about it on Symantec's website here.
I spoke about Vontu briefly in a previous post and mentioned the whole Symantec acquisition of Vontu here when it was still a rumour. As it turns out, it was true and a very badly kept secret.
I'll post more about my thoughts on what this means for Symantec later when I have a spare moment. Hopefully that's sooner rather than later.
Symantec finally announced their acquisition of Vontu early last week. More about it on Symantec's website here.
I spoke about Vontu briefly in a previous post and mentioned the whole Symantec acquisition of Vontu here when it was still a rumour. As it turns out, it was true and a very badly kept secret.
I'll post more about my thoughts on what this means for Symantec later when I have a spare moment. Hopefully that's sooner rather than later.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Symantec going DLP?
I go and talk about Vontu and the next thing I read is that there's a rumour flying around about an acquisition. If InfoWorld is right, it will be announced next week that Symantec is acquiring Vontu.
No I don't have any inside information. I don't work for Vontu. I know some have been wondering (based on some of the search referrals that have been coming through - although no one's actually piped up and asked me directly). I wasn't exactly full of praise about Vontu in my last post was I? I didn't think so.
So assuming this moves ahead, we'll have 3 BIG Vendors in the DLP space. McAfee, EMC (they acquired Tablus earlier this year and rolled it into their RSA division) and Symantec.
Looks like DLP's going mainstream very quickly, which is obviously good for the industry and organisations looking at a DLP solution.
No I don't have any inside information. I don't work for Vontu. I know some have been wondering (based on some of the search referrals that have been coming through - although no one's actually piped up and asked me directly). I wasn't exactly full of praise about Vontu in my last post was I? I didn't think so.
So assuming this moves ahead, we'll have 3 BIG Vendors in the DLP space. McAfee, EMC (they acquired Tablus earlier this year and rolled it into their RSA division) and Symantec.
Looks like DLP's going mainstream very quickly, which is obviously good for the industry and organisations looking at a DLP solution.
Friday, October 12, 2007
DLP vendor race
I'm still in a data security mood, so those of you in the identity world can tune out this time round if you like...or if you want to broaden your horizons, read on :)
Remember when I said to implement a proper data leakage prevention (DLP) solution you need an agent on the endpoint? If you're new to the blog or if you're one of the lazy ones and don't bother reading my posts that go for longer than 2 paragraphs (you know who you are), go read about what I said here (this post somehow managed to get a mention on the Network Sentry blog at IT Business Edge - I don't know how).
Now that you're back, let's get to the point. Vontu are one of the main vendors that always get a mention when you talk DLP, but they've always only had a network based solution. What that meant was that they could only watch data flowing on the network and prevent it from leaving. Once a laptop leaves the corporate network, data could easily escape and no one would be the wiser. This is the main reason you need an agent. An autonomous one that doesn't need to be connected to the network to enforce security policies for information.
As I said, there have typically been 2 types of DLP vendors. Network centric ones, and endpoint centric ones. It seems Vontu agrees with what I said because they've realised they need to be at the endpoint to really get serious about being a DLP solution. In doing so, they are the first (that I know of) to take a serious stab at doing both.
They announced earlier this month that they now have an endpoint agent. I took a look at the functionality and while useful, is still quite a way behind what some of the other endpoint DLP vendors can do in terms of functionality. In other words, they're playing catch-up. The advantage they have is that if an organisation wants to go with a network centric approach (I don't really know why they would - although these tend to be cheaper) with some coverage on the endpoint (but not a lot) then they can go with Vontu.
Where Vontu may win out in the short term is in the marketing stakes. Organisation that are easily sold based on Powerpoint slides may be convinced that Vontu is the way to go. My money's on Vontu going out and saying "we're the only ones that cover all the bases for DLP because we do the network aspects and we cover the endpoint". It's very difficult to sell on feature function unless a customer really has specific requirements that one vendor can meet better than the other. And even then, the only way to prove it is in a bake-off, because everyone's going to say "yes" to most requirements.
I have no doubt Vontu will continue to add functionality to all their products. This can only be good for competition in the high profile space that's come to be known as DLP. The question is how fast can they run? Will they catch up in the endpoint game (unlikely unless they double the size of their development team because they've now got more products to work on)? What about the other vendors? How fast are they running? Do they care that Vontu are in the endpoint DLP space now (rhetorical question)?
Of course I'm just stating the obvious. In any new area of enterprise software, almost all the major players are small to mid-size companies/start-ups. It's usually the ones that run the fastest that will win out in the end. Not always, but it sure helps.
Remember when I said to implement a proper data leakage prevention (DLP) solution you need an agent on the endpoint? If you're new to the blog or if you're one of the lazy ones and don't bother reading my posts that go for longer than 2 paragraphs (you know who you are), go read about what I said here (this post somehow managed to get a mention on the Network Sentry blog at IT Business Edge - I don't know how).
Now that you're back, let's get to the point. Vontu are one of the main vendors that always get a mention when you talk DLP, but they've always only had a network based solution. What that meant was that they could only watch data flowing on the network and prevent it from leaving. Once a laptop leaves the corporate network, data could easily escape and no one would be the wiser. This is the main reason you need an agent. An autonomous one that doesn't need to be connected to the network to enforce security policies for information.
As I said, there have typically been 2 types of DLP vendors. Network centric ones, and endpoint centric ones. It seems Vontu agrees with what I said because they've realised they need to be at the endpoint to really get serious about being a DLP solution. In doing so, they are the first (that I know of) to take a serious stab at doing both.
They announced earlier this month that they now have an endpoint agent. I took a look at the functionality and while useful, is still quite a way behind what some of the other endpoint DLP vendors can do in terms of functionality. In other words, they're playing catch-up. The advantage they have is that if an organisation wants to go with a network centric approach (I don't really know why they would - although these tend to be cheaper) with some coverage on the endpoint (but not a lot) then they can go with Vontu.
Where Vontu may win out in the short term is in the marketing stakes. Organisation that are easily sold based on Powerpoint slides may be convinced that Vontu is the way to go. My money's on Vontu going out and saying "we're the only ones that cover all the bases for DLP because we do the network aspects and we cover the endpoint". It's very difficult to sell on feature function unless a customer really has specific requirements that one vendor can meet better than the other. And even then, the only way to prove it is in a bake-off, because everyone's going to say "yes" to most requirements.
I have no doubt Vontu will continue to add functionality to all their products. This can only be good for competition in the high profile space that's come to be known as DLP. The question is how fast can they run? Will they catch up in the endpoint game (unlikely unless they double the size of their development team because they've now got more products to work on)? What about the other vendors? How fast are they running? Do they care that Vontu are in the endpoint DLP space now (rhetorical question)?
Of course I'm just stating the obvious. In any new area of enterprise software, almost all the major players are small to mid-size companies/start-ups. It's usually the ones that run the fastest that will win out in the end. Not always, but it sure helps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)