Consolidation Trend Should Help Fight Virus, Spam Infestation

If a fairly new trend continues to pick up speed, IT managers will have an easier time

keeping their companies’ email from being infested with viruses and spam.

Anti-virus companies are starting to join forces with anti-spam companies, giving IT and

email managers fewer vendors to deal with and an easier time managing their ’email hygiene’

tools. Yesterday’s acquisition of anti-spam vendor ActiveState by Sophos, Inc., an

anti-virus company based in Lynfield, Mass., was just the latest consolidation in this

trend, say industry observers.

”Judging by what our clients are asking for, there’s been a real demand for more

streamlined solutuions,” says Jan Sundgren, an industry analyst with Cambridge-based

Forrester Research. ”It is a hassle… the acquisition process and administration of

content security. There’s so much pressure now to streamline things and cut costs. This is a

pretty strong trend.”

Sophos, considered by some industry analysts to hold the Number Four spot in the list of top

anti-virus vendors, announced Wednesday that they bought ActiveState, based in Vancouver,

British Columbia, for $23 million in cash. Sophos plans to integrate its anti-virus

technology with PureMessage, ActiveState’s enterprise email protection software. Sophos

PureMessage will be designed to deliver anti-virus and anti-spam protection in one product

offering.

”We’re looking to extend the perimeter boundary defense,” says Steve Orenberg, president

of Sophos. ”Spam has become more nefarious and has had more effect on the enterprise than

ever before… Spam is a very prolific carrier of email viruses. Look at sobig, the

fastest-spreading and most pervasive virus in history. What spam enabled Sobig to do was

proliferate at an incredible speed far beyond what anybody had experienced before.”

Actually, thanks to a combination of the Blaster worm and Sobig-F, the Sobig variant that

hit last month, August went down in history as the worst month on record for digital

attacks. Sobig-F alone caused $29.7 billion worth of economic damages.

Industry analysts generally agree that spam today accounts for at least 50 percent of the

email entering corporate networks. ISPs have it even worse, with spam accounting for often

more than 70 percent of their incoming mail.

Together, spam and viruses have become a major hurdle for nearly ever IT manager out there.

Email hygiene is the latest phrase wrapped around the activity of keeping the email system

up and running and clean. It includes spam blocking, virus blocking, content blocking and

securing email through encryption.

Matt Cain, a vice president at industry analyst firm, Meta Group, says anything the industry

can do to make email hygiene easier is a big benefit for IT managers.

”The Sophos acquisition is important as an example of where the email hygiene market is

going to go,” says Cain. ”We’re going to see more consolidation in this market. A few

years from now, you’ll go to an anti-virus vendor and buy a suite of hygiene tools that

bundle all of these tools together.”

Forrester’s Sundgren says Sophos’ move should only strengthen the company, which sits in the

top tier of anti-virus vendors, along with Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro.

”One weakness Sophos had was a focus on anti-virus as the market was moving to broader

solutions,” says Sundgren. ”Now they’re in a very good position.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020