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5 Mergers for a Less Aggravating IT Security Industry

Tired of wading through an overly saturated security market in search of the right defenses for your company? Here are some mergers security experts say would make the industry more tolerable.

By Bill Brenner, Senior Editor

Page 3

"The branch office UTM device has been and will continue to bring on more and more functionality, presenting a threat to Cisco's huge edge router business. Buying Fortinet would eliminate that threat for Cisco.

"Oracle has maintained for a long time that they do database security, but they need some coverage for folks that want to do DB security on the network. Imperva is interesting because of the web application firewall as well, which would be a great fit for Oracle.

"Full-disk encryption is a feature of an endpoint security suite and Symantec doesn't own the technology they sell, relying on an OEM deal with GuardianEdge. The longer they wait, the more money it will cost (unless GuardianEdge hits the wall -- always a possibility) and if they can't get a deal done, they risk alienating customers who would need to migrate to whatever they bought.

"Clearly application security tools are not a long term standalone market. These capabilities need to be built into the development environments that engineers use to build the applications that run our businesses. That means IBM (the Rational Group), HP (Mercury), and Microsoft are logical buyers here. Also management specialists like CA and BMC are likely buyers. Fortify is the market leader, but there are plenty of other companies playing in this space."