Retail Therapy
Symantec has been on a blow-out shopping spree...
Symantec has been on a blow-out shopping spree. Perhaps it was its purchase
of Mountain Wave earlier this year that put the company in the mood for
splashing out - not content with just the one purchase, Symantec has
snapped up three more companies in an impressive bout of spending.
Hot on the heels of reporting a 39 per cent growth in revenue in the first
fiscal quarter, it was announced last month that Symantec was the proud new
owner of: Recourse Technologies, whose main business is the provision of intrusion
detection systems; managed security services provider Riptech, Inc.; and
SecurityFocus, provider of threat alerts and host of the highly regarded
BugTraq vulnerability mailing list. The company spent $135 million on
Recourse Technologies, $145 million on Riptech, and SecurityFocus set the
company back a mere $75 million.
In the AV world, response to the news has been varied, some voicing concern
over the monopoly-forming tendencies displayed by Symantec, while many have
predicted the demise of the BugTraq list (and coinciding with the
announcement was the opening of a new full disclosure list, imaginatively
named 'Full Disclosure'). However, support for SecurityFocus co-founder
Elias Levy and his team has not been in short supply, and sources at
Symantec have claimed that BugTraq subscriptions have continued to rise
since the acquisition.
While
statements from the companies have attempted to allay any fears
of changes to the character of the BugTraq mailing list, we will have to
wait until the dust has settled to find out whether such fears were well
founded, as well as what impact Symantec's purchases will have on the
larger picture. With NAI having increased its exchange offer for
outstanding publicly held shares of McAfee.com by 15.5%, could this be the
start of an empire-expanding battle between the bigger players in the
security market?
01 August 2002
Tags:
virus
del.icio.us 
digg this
