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IBM to Buy ISS for $1.3 Billion
gerald626 writes "IBM announced today that they have formed an agreement to purchase ISS for 1.3 billion dollars." From the article: " The all-cash transaction of about $28 per share is meant to bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations, the company said. ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools. IBM said it intends to use ISS's expertise and software to provide more robust security-related services to its corporate customers."
...want a space station? To spy on Redmond?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
IBM: This ISS, could it carry my wisdom beyond the Internet?
Sybok: It could. Yes.
IBM: Then I shall make use of this... ISS.
Sybok: It will be your chariot!
(Kirk politely raises his hand.)
Kirk: Excuse me.
IBM: It will carry my power to every corner of creation...
Kirk: Excuse me! I'd just like to ask a question!
(McCoy looks at Kirk like he just farted in church.)
Kirk: Excuse me, but What does IBM need with a space station?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
IBM buys the International Space Station? (followed by a brief period of shock :-) )
They bought the moon? Wait, that's no moon...
Maybe in this case it would be wise to spell out the acronym, so we don't all have a tizzy that they're buying *THE* ISS, the one orbiting the Earth.
stuff |
Geez, everyone's telling the same lame "ISS" = "International Space Station" joke.
It's just a typo! Haven't you figured that out yet? IBM simply bought IIS from Microsoft. I wonder if they'll make IIS run on Linux?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Can anyone honestly think of a better tax-haven than space? I mean really, what's the rate up there these days?
Well, investing in Internet Security Systems seems like a good deal.
Let me be one of the first thousand to say, "Why would IBM buy the International Space Station?"
In Soviet Russia, Space Station buys you!
All your space station are belong to IBM!
(Whatever happened to Natalie Portman? I hardly ever see her around here any more.)
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
There are going to be millions of mod point used on -1 Redundant.
That's only because there isn't a -1 Obvious.
Now, back to my job at NASA.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
It is internet security systems: http://iss.net/ I hope blackice remains as a pc firewall, I think it is one of the best
Free yourself use open source.
IBM made a resounding move into security on Wednesday, acquiring Internet Security Systems for $1.3 billion.
The all-cash transaction of about $28 per share is meant to bolster IBM's ability to deliver security services to corporations, the company said.
ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools.
IBM said it intends to use ISS's expertise and software to provide more robust security-related services to its corporate customers.
"This acquisition will help IBM to provide companies with access to trained experts and leading-edge processes and technology to evaluate and protect against threats and enforce security policies," said Val Rahmani, general manager of infrastructure management services at IBM Global Services.
The ISS acquisition, expected to close in fourth quarter of this year, adds to a rapid-fire succession of big purchases at IBM. In August alone, IBM has announced plans to buy Webify Solutions, MRO Software and FileNet. The tab, if all the deals go through, will exceed $3.6 billion.
Looking to boost revenue from software and services, most of the company's acquisitions--which total more than 40 since 2003--have been software firms.
IBM is seeking to grow profits by creating a comprehensive product portfolio and deliver a combination of software and consulting services, according to company executives.
With ISS, Big Blue intends to deliver the company's products through consulting engagements and hosted services.
"By delivering an integrated security platform that is adaptable and extensible to address new threats and business requirements without incremental complexity and cost, ISS has delivered the foundation for delivering security as a service," said Tom Noonan, president and CEO of ISS.
IBM already offers some managed security services and includes security software in its Tivoli product line.
IBM's decision to buy the ISS was a fantastic decision. They can now freely ignore the Sarbanes Oxlley laws as well as Monopoly and other laws in every country as the IBM headquarters will not be located in outer space making them immune to earth laws.
Great move on the executives part!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In other news... the Fisher Space Pen Company's stock is skyrocketing...
Bad, wicked, naughty Zoot. She's been setting alight to our beacon, which, I just remembered, is space station shaped.
It's not the first time this has happened.
Read any good sonnets lately?
I mean come on, use your head. You may need to smack it a few times for a nice brain reboot.
As long as this buyout doesn't mean 15 more login screens with separate passwords to do anything internal, I'm down with it.
ISS=Internet Security Systems
From the site since i know none of you want to click on the link: ISS builds network protection products and services, including intrusion detection and monitoring tools.
It's a company!
Internet Security Systems. www.iss.net
They do security. That is how IBM will derive security benefits from the purchase. At least that would be the going theory.
ISS has also apparently made a huge impression on Slashdot readers. *smirk*
Although buying a space station and fitting it with an Annihiliation Beam which they can use to hold the world for ransom to the tune of one... million... dollars, would seem to have some shareholder value as well, I didn't know that the shares in the Space Station were only 28$ a share. Or that shares even existed for the space station. It must be those wacky Russians trying to make another few million off space.
This is a horrible move on IBM's part.
ISS is having its clock cleaned in the market, pulled apart by high-performance enterprise IPS vendors (Tipping Point, Juniper, Cisco, and the like) on one side, and having their thunder stolen by platform security vendors (Sygate, Check Point, Netscreen, and, yes, even Cisco) on the other -- not to mention the "built-in" stuff that Microsoft has released and the more advanced platform security controls that the company is prepping for release.
Not too long ago, ISS made the fateful decision to knife most of its IDS/IPS product lines in the back by discontinuing support for "General Purpose" servers and third party appliances, effectively forcing all of its enterprise customers to buy an "owned" ISS appliance (the Proventia series). Companies with large deployments of ISS RealSecure on now End of Lifed platforms suddenly found themselves offered a year of update support and another capital outlay to "upgrade" to Proventia appliances. Not many followed the company down that path, but the ones that did get "first cut" appliances found that they, well, sucked. The company then recentered on a more "appliance"-looking hardware platform, but, by then, the damage was done.
Then ISS took a market-leading desktop security product, BlackICE, and folded it into their IDS/IPS management product. The integration damn near killed a lot of existing BlackICE customers, not to mention the fact that succeeding software releases were, in many cases, incompatible with previous releases. Those customers who bravely rolled out a BlackICE installation found themselves in the unenviable position of having to do the rollout all over again.
Then there's ISS's reputation for "leading-edge" security research. Enter the firing of Michael Lynn related to the Cisco BlackHat presentation... They look like idiots out of the whole ordeal, more interested in protecting their corporate butts from the Cisco PR engine than the disclosure of even SANTITIZED security information.
IBM? Good luck with your new toy. It was broken before you bought it.
Seems a little high for an incomplete structure with limited, inconsistant transportation to and from...
I didn't know the International Space Station was for sale? ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Look at the stock price for ISSX, compare that to the purchase price of about $28/share. There is a total "premium" of 7% above the market value of the ISS stock. The only entity making money on this deal is the brokerage firm that handled the transaction.
At the risk of disrupting the fun, I'd like to interject a serious comment. ISS resells some real security technologies that IBM has been missing from their offerings for a long time. In the network security space, they resell some important technology that has traditionally been in the "Cisco camp" and thus mostly implemented by enterprise customers that don't do a lot of business with IBM. This could really change the landscape of enterprise security... in a few years when IBM manages to get ISS integrated into their sales channels.
I have to say I am shocked that ISS was worth 1.3 billion. I mean I am very familiar with it's vulnerability assessment toolkits but... 1,300 million. Just seems like a lot but I guess it is all for a name and a reputation (funny, my firm stopped recomending ISS all together but that was a while ago and I've heard they cleaned up their act).
Also for this article can we add a filtering setting: "read at no reference to space stations"?
This is funny, because as someone who has worked for ISS (Internet Security Systems) and frequently reads Slashdot, I've found several articles confusing when people write about /the/ ISS (Space Station) and I think, "Wait, what the hell are we doing?" So I welcome you all to my world of ambiguousness, which won't exist much longer now that it's been bought...
//TODO: signature
Internet Security Systems
when I first started working in infosec (5, 6 years ago) I spent a lot of time downloading and playing with the free trials for various vuln scanners - ISS, Retina, LANGuard and so on. I mentioned this to someone with more security experience who replied "ISS? It's Still Shit, right?"
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Why is this ad at the top of slashdot??? http://www.trueprosperitynow.com/?gclid=CNuy7vep9o YCFRKVHgodww0FdQ/
Error 2101: all your sig are belong to us
ISS is a network products company. They really could carry IBMs word across the Internet.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Ah, slashdot groupthink. You like space. You're intelligent. I get it. Now try to read replies before you become yet another nerd piping in with your obvious comment.
I've seen ISS involved in more crooked deals and sales than any other IT company apart from EMC.
Unfortunately, this sale is going to benefit more than a few people who sacrificed the security and protection of entire US government agencies for the sake of a quick buck.
Fuck you ISS. May you rot and burn in hell.
INT. REDMOND OFFICE. DAY.
SECRETARY: Mr Ballmer! Mr Ballmer! Please stop! You are ruining the paintwork on the ceiling with that chair...
First of all, ISS's vulnerability scanner has turned to such a piece of dog doo, I wouldn't touch it with a poop scooper. In 2005, it was installing an vulnerable MSDE onto windows boxes, and just patching the MSDE was enough to break compatibility (This vulnerability has been out for 3 months at the time). On the product side though, ISS's scanners have been thoroughly stomped by Tenable's Nessus and Eeye's Retina.
As far as ISS goes on the IDS/IPS side, their products went from leader to lackluster. Snort, Tipping point, and Intrushield - need I say more?
Then on the vulnerability database side, you have the X-Force DB being demolished by the innovative Open Source Vulnerability Database led by real security gurus like Jericho, not to mention the other DBs like Secunia, NVD, etc.
ISS = vaguely reminds me of CA, corporate types taking good products and not keeping them updated, not innovating, and just trying to suck the blood from corporate customers.
Sounds like the IBM I work for.
I for one welcome our new IBM overlords.
Umm...
What are you getting at?
Internet Security Systems They make scanner software. I used it a few years back. It was pretty cool but retina was better. My $.02
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
... with snakes hopefully
\u262D = \u5350
Right, so NOT the International Space Station then ... that would have been weird.
when is IBM putting a giant friking laser on the Space station?
Amazing how many space stations I had to read to find was iss.net was.
....BITCH!...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Anyone else read that and wonder what IBM would want with the International Space Station?
Nope. You're the only one who made that misteak.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Which gives me the perfect place to point out that $1.3 billion for a relatively small merger means that companies now control sums of money that used to be governmental in nature; and thus, since money is power, have become de facto governments.
This is just to show the libertarians out there that free market does not neccessarily mean LESS government, only different government, for money is the ultimate power structure.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://www.iss.net/
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I still remember when ISS was the actual product name of a little security tool that was just an open source project, back somwhere in the 94-96 era, and the author hung out on EFNet irc channel #hack. My how times have changed, I'm glad he's done well for himself.
Isn't 1.3 billion dollars a bit low for the International Space Station? Wait..umm..nevermind.
"Since the VP is such a VIP, maybe we should keep the PC on the QT. Otherwise he could go MIA, and we'd all end up on KP."
Sounds perfectly nonobfuscationalized to me.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
You may have hit on something here -- if all the world's megacorps decided they needed jurisdiction-free headquarters in space, the problem of humanity being stuck on planet Earth would be solved! Before this decade is out, we could have a space-based population consisting of hundreds of thousands of CxOs, lawyers, accountants, and their support staff.
Perhaps we've been looking in all the wrong places for the Right Stuff? The future of space is... cubicles!
Heh. Honestly, when I hit 'reply', there wasn't a single comment on the page...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
No, just you and me apparently, when I wrote the damn thing! Doh!
Wow, so close.
Narrator (Jack): When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be the corporations that name everything: the IBM stellar-sphere, the Microsoft galley, the planet Starbucks.
w00t!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
What does IBM want with a space station??
Hmm, IBM has bought many (somewhat important) companies lately. I don't know what they are doing with the all the stuff they have bought lately but I think that it has something to do with their new strategy for server markets.
Maybe some market analytic could sum in his/hers blog that what those companies produce, how IBM is going to use them, and what's more important, what's their main objective? What is IBM gaining from all these things?
All I can think is that something BIG is going to happen in a year or two... Look at the things they have bought, there must be something which of connects all those companies. Does anyone of you slashdotters have any idea?
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
...welcome our new space station based super-computer overlord !
It the start of the "B" Ark. Every one know where their towel is.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
why not use international waters instead?
...that acronyms will one day cause the world to be blown to smitherines. What ISS means to you may not be the same thing it means to Joe from down the street. I think the title should be clarified. At least put something in the text that shows it is not the International Space Station that was (will be) purchased.
On another thought. I wonder what the International Space Station would sell for? Much more than 1.3B, I bet.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
Bye bye Redmond. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rods_from_god - but substitute 'Mainframe' for 'tungsten telephone pole'.
[Insert pithy quote here]
OMG Ponies? I didn't see that. Got a link? I did a search for "OMG Ponies" and got nothing... then I tried "Ponies" still no dice.... any help?
Crap! Nevermind. I found it... hint: search with google and not just slashdot's built-in search.
for others confused like me:
OMG Ponies and Pic goodness
...that's a space station!
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Great move on the executives part!
Yeah, great! Now if we could just send the rest of the world's corporate executives in to outer space, we'd all live happily ever after.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Wow, for a second I thought it was April 1!
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
That sounds like it might have been between ST: IV and ST: VI, but we all know that there was no movie in between ST: IV and ST: VI .
It didn't happen, okay!
-Ster
I used to work for a small australian startup called vCIS, which did virus detection via virtualization. ISS bought the company and in less than a year sacked everyone and closed it down.
I wonder if now it is ISS's turn at the hands of IBM?
Um... ST: V?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
But who's going to keep our telephones clean?
deus does not exist but if he does
I originally thought this was in reference to IBM purchasing the International Space Station (ISS) and solving NASA's funding problem.
And, IIRC, a firm is selling speculative plots of land on Mars. OK, so a Corporation won't put any physical headquarters there anytime soon. But with a million lawyers typing queries on a million keyboards for citations and vague authority into LEXIS, they might be able to piggyback a trivial payload on a Mars lander mission denoting the corporate charter and physical articles of incorporation, and register a putative "agent" to handle such, and then, they might say "If we choose, these are the (nonexistent) rules and laws we must live by. Of course we are going to be good corporate citizens of Earth, but we reserve the right..." Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah, we were there first. Checkmate.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Say good bye to ISS, same thing happen to LC5
u b33|\| 0w|\|3d
Great! Get the SOBs out of our hair for once.
Wow! Now that would make for a popular nuclear missile target I'll bet.
IBM seems to be working up to something. During the 80's and early 90's they used the alter-ego ISM to circumvent certain sanctions, allowing them to trade in South Africa. Now they buy ISS. No doubt they're planning to replace the letter I next. I challenge everyone to think of the first TLA ending in SS
Um... ST: V?
Star Trek: Voyager?
There are 9 trek files
1) Forgivable as it was made in the 70's
2) Awesome
3) Passable
4) Wonderful
6) Awesome
7) Passable
8) Great
9) Passable
10) Pretty darn shit
They didn't make a number 5 for some reason.
because then you can't threaten your competitors with a death ray.... DUH!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.