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EMC Buys RSA Security for $2.1B
jam244 writes to mention the news of RSA's purchase by EMC. The deal is expected to go through in late third or early fourth quarter of 2006. Once folded into the company, RSA will act as the company's information security division. From the article: "Stice said the proposed price for RSA was 'somewhat expensive,' but added that the deal has the potential to improve EMC's business mix, broaden its product portfolio and further penetrate the consumer security storage market."
So what is Rivest and Stein's piece of the pie?
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
It is nice to see EMC moving a large part of its security stuff in house. I cannot say exactly what this will mean for the end user, but I hope that it will make security more integrated and, of course, more secure.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Watch for EMC to become a dominant player in the IT market, going way beyond disk drives and data storage. These folks are making some very strategic acquisitions.
I was wondering what was going to happen to the dog. Never mind.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Looks like they've been busy :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/Same guys that bought VMWARE
Novell, with somewhere between 100 million & 200 million installed seats of Novell Directory Services ["eDirectory"], has got to be the world's leading vendor of RSA-based identification, authorization, and encryption products.
So if Novell ever goes belly-up, then it seems like EMC might be very interested in the bankruptcy sale.
Oh, and did I mention that Novell has this software product called "Novell Storage Services"?
Sweet, I had no idea a major crypto company could be had so cheap!
You forgot to sign your first post with EMC's private key, so I reject your claim.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I'm guessing some of the product's will get cut off. Going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing Most of the Keon family will get cut off, at least the toolkits with openssl and boncycastle as options for customers.
The big question is if the CA too will be cut-off... there is lots of viable options here too Ejbca for example <shameless plug>There is commercial support available</shameless plug>.
We have a 60TB EMC SAN with the NAS frontend application as well. It has been nothing but headaches and problems since we got it and we regreat the purchase every single day. We also use RSA, most notably for our vpn token links. I would hate to see something reliable and workable like RSA solutions go to crap because of EMC
"Captain, I'm detecting enormous levels of marketspeak and a high buzzword quotient from this article summary. It is highly illogical."
Interesting.. Could the day be far off when EMC offers a SAN solution that does front-to-back encryption? Encrypted on the platter, stays encrypted through your SAN, and gets decrypted at the multipath layer?
That way, they could argue that they not only keep your storage secure physically, but logically as well. For shops that have geographically-spanned SANs, this could be a helluva selling point.
EMC is trying really really hard to be a software company as hardware margins are constantly under pressure. In last couple of years, they have coughed up billions to buy companies like Documentum, VMWare, etc. which, seriously, were of questionable value to the company. To me, the company's acquistions look clueless.
who read that as two dollars and eighteen cents?
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Everthing has to be broadened and penetrated in marketing speak? ;)
OT, I know... I know....
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
People are missing the bigger picture.
The effect of a myriad of government regulations is to create a vast surveillance network. The effect of Sarbanes-Oxley is that companies must retain all their financial records for 7 years. The effect of the Patriot Act (and Bush's skirting of the law) is that phone companies are maintaining all their call records, and even recording calls, on behalf of the government. Congressman are ramming through regulation that will cause ISPs and web-sites to retain their logs for many years in case law enforcement needs them.
The 4rth Ammendment protecting privacy still applies: government won't (in theory) be able to touch those records without a court order, but all these companies will be recording that information. Everything you do right now will could be used against you seven years from now in some sort of legal case. From the point of view of law enforcement, this is wonderful, because if they are targetting a suspect, they will be able to instantly grab all their information going back for years. Of course, this is horrible for privacy activists who worry more about government misuing the information than about criminals.
The acquisition of RSA makes perfect sense in this light. RSA markets "authentication" products -- and recent regulations means that all those authentication records must be recorded for years.
Since cybersecurity, law enforcement, and long term storage are converging because of government regulations, expect EMC to make more similar acquisitions.
My old security consultancy was assimilated by Symantec. Our technological and biological distinctiveness was added to their own. Our individuality was irrelevant. We didn't even get to keep a sub-brand ("@stake, a Symantec Company") like Norton did. Now we're lost in the homogeneous blob. Of course, that was a now-obvious screw-up, because the sales people still say things like "our professional services staff is based on the expertise of @stake..." It's great for little yellow boxes of product, but two years on, the Symantec name still doesn't stand on its own with respect to security consulting. Not when commissions depend on it.
The people at McAfee/NA were a bit brighter about it, and the value of the Foundstone name and reputation wasn't squandered as badly as it could have been when they got bought out. Sure Foundstone shed people just as @stake did, but there's a world of difference. They decided to follow perceived distinctiveness as a tool for selling consulting, and perceived ubiquity as a tool to sell products; the names differentiate them.
Good luck to RSA. I'm sure they'll keep the name, expand their consulting services and probably give us a hell of a run for our money. (What with EMC already competing with Veritas/Symantec...) It's gonna be an interesting time.
J
*Best line this week: "If you're happy and you know it, stick with your current dosage."
I think not...(*poof*)
Hehe... I just got hired at EMC, I turned down an offer from RSA to work at EMC instead. Looks like I made the right choice. I should have bought some RSA stock though, its gone up like 10 bucks over the past 48 hours.
In other news, ABC buys XYZ for $1.23B.
(1, never heard of these companies, 2, who cares?)
Quit your bitching. You got bought and you didn't get to keep your name. boo hoo.
Maybe Symantec would value the @stake consultants more if they weren't always bitching about stupid stuff like names and getting to remain l33t instead of working and trying to fit in with the company.
Why does Ellingson Mineral Corporation need RSA? Are they afraid of their Gibson being hacked, or something?
Who's talking about Symantec valuing @stake consultants? Most of them have moved on. The small number of ex-@stake consultants still at Sym do good work, pay their own way, and by and large carry the cost of greenhorns and slackers from earlier acquisitions.
The point was there's value in a name. Symantec has such a weak quality reputation that Sym's own sales people still *constantly* trade on the @stake name when selling consulting, despite the fact that fewer than half the @stake consultants were still there a year after acquisition. But officially Sym tossed the identifier that a services professional could have some pride in. It was a dumb move. Good people like to have some identification with their work, but the Sym corporate line is to homogenize everything, losing services in the sea of product. Net result? Most of the true professionals are long gone. You want star consultants? Go rent an ex-@staker from ISec Partners or Empower/Leviathan. Or get similar quality from Foundstone, Special Ops, etc etc.
On topic, if EMC similarly tosses the RSA name, they're fools.