Symantec said Thursday it will pay $370 million in cash to acquire encryption technology providers PGP and GuardianEdge Technologies, with the deals expected to close during the company’s June quarter. Symantec sees its acquisition of standards-based encryption capabilities from the two firms as a natural extension of its strategy for securing and managing information on any device — across both the enterprise and consumer segments as well as in the cloud, said Symantec CEO Enrique Salem.
“With PGP and GuardianEdge’s encryption solutions for full-disk, removable media, e-mail, file, folder and smartphones, Symantec will have the broadest set of integrated data-protection capabilities,” Salem said. “We will be able to address the encryption needs of all customer segments from the largest enterprises and governments to small businesses and individuals.”
Expanded Opportunities
Together, PGP and GuardianEdge are expected to significantly expand the addressable security market that Symantec can serve, Salem told investors during a Thursday conference call. “State and national governments are enacting more stringent mandates, driving the need to encrypt sensitive information and protect an individual’s privacy,” Salem said. “Also, the increased costs and frequency of data breaches are driving the adoption of encryption as companies strive to mitigate risk and protect their critical information from cybercriminals.”
Symantec said PGP’s key management platform and product portfolio of hard disk, file, folder, e-mail and mobile and removable media encryption will be integrated into the Symantec Protection Center to further enhance the management of endpoint security, data loss prevention and gateway security products. “PGP has more than 110,000 enterprise customers and more than one million SMB and individual customers worldwide,” Salem said.
Forrester Research Vice President Jonathan Penn said the PGP acquisition was quite a surprise, and a pleasant one since PGP offers unique value to Symantec.
“They will have to support PGP encryption in e-mail…