Symantec Eyes Enterprise with Brightmail Buy

Symantec Corp., a giant in the information security space, bought anti-spam leader

Brightmail Inc. on Wednesday in a bid to take a bigger bite out of the enterprise.

Symantec, based in Cupertino, Calif., bought San Francisco-based Brightmail for a reported $370 million.

Symantec had already had an 11 percent interest in Brightmail, which brought in $26 million

in the fiscal year ended this past January.

Brightmail’s products will give Symantec, a player in the consumer anti-spam market, its

first steps into the enterprise anti-spam arena. The company’s anti-spam products filter

spam, viruses and unwanted messages at the Internet gateway.

”I absolutely believe spam is a security issue,” says Steve Cullen, vice president of

security products and solutions at Symantec. ”Viruses and worms infiltrate a network

through email. Spam absolutely is a security threat.”

Symantec got into the consumer anti-spam space two years ago. Last September, the company

released its Norton Internet Security Suite with upgraded anti-spam capabilities. Symantec

also released a stand-alone anti-spam product, Norton Anti-Spam.

But the company had no anti-spam solution for the enterprise side of its business. And with

spam increasingly becoming a security issue, many enterprise IT managers are looking for

anti-virus, perimeter protection and anti-spam products all from the same vendor.

Joining anti-virus and anti-spam forces has become a trend in the vendor world.

Sophos, Inc., a network security and anti-virus company based in Lynnfield, Mass., acquired

ActiveState, an anti-spam vendor, last September.

Symantec’s Cullen says this is a move Symantec has been eager to make.

”This will give us a market-leading solution at the gateway,” says Cullen. ”That will

help with the perception that Symantec is a client company. We weren’t known as a gateway

security provider. This is a step that will secure our place on the gateway and in the

enterprise.”

The acquisition, conditioned on customary regulatory approval, is expected to close early

in July.

Cullen says it’s too early to say exactly how Symantec will package and sell Brightmail’s

products, or what will happen to Brightmail’s 165 employees.

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