Two major tech players have pushed further into the data security space with acquisitions announced on Tuesday.
McAfee announced plans to acquire NitroSecurity, a privately owned firm providing tools to collect data and respond to attempts to breach network security. It bills itself as being able to provide a single management platform that ties together security threats detected throughout system infrastructure.
IBM, meanwhile, is buying Q1 Labs, a Massachusetts firm whose software, similarly, collects and analyzes security information from different sources across an organization such as the network, applications, user activity, mobile endpoints, and physical security devices to track security incidents and model risks. This is IBM's tenth security related purchase in the last decade, the company said in a press release.
The two acquisitions reflect a bet that the data security space will rely increasingly on surveillance rather than solely establishing barriers to prevent attacks. That approach is the foundation of the security information and event management (SIEM) industry, which grew to just under $1 billion in 2010, according to Gartner research.
"Since perimeter defense alone is no longer capable of thwarting all threats, IBM is in a unique position to shift security thinking to an integrated, predictive approach," said Brendan Hannigan, CEO of Q1 Labs. "Q1 Labs' security analytics will add greater intelligence to IBM's security portfolio."
NitroSecurity's purchase by McAfee will consolidate an existing relationship between the two companies. NitroSecurity is already part of McAfee Security Innovation Alliance, and its products can already be used with McAfee's management console, called ePolicy Orchestrator.
"NitroSecurity's technology supports a broad range of information sources, including network security devices, firewalls, operating system and application logs, vulnerability assessment scans, identity and access management systems, and privacy systems. It will complement the extensive McAfee security portfolio and help to meet the demanding compliance and protection needs of our joint customers," said Ken Levine, chairman and chief executive officer of NitroSecurity.
In an analysis of the deals, Enterprise Management Associates Research Director Scott Crawford wrote that both purchases highlighted a sea change in the SIEM industry. Q1, he wrote on his company's blog, has been a leader in creating products that are easy to integrate and manage. NitroSecurity, meanwhile, brought high-performance data management tools and a more natural way to interrogate collected information. Its foothold in government and industrial control systems was likely especially attractive to McAfee, according to Crawford.
Crawford acknowledged that SIEM industry acquisitions have sometimes disappointed in the past, but argued that the industry remains a frontier.
"It is an evolution in how organizations collect and manage information relevant to security from multiple sources - not just defensive point products that must already know what they're looking for," he wrote. "Both of these vendors have made a claim on the evolution of a new generation of SIEM."
