Big day today in the software security space. PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge Technologies (both competitors in the whole disk encryption market) have been acquired by Symantec Corporation. The acquisition provides much-needed applications to Symantec's industry-leading security software stack.
Symantec has seen competitors such as CheckPoint, Sophos, and McAfee acquire key encryption technology platforms like Pointsec, Utimaco, and Safeboot. They will now have a strong whole disk encryption story, as well as solutions for file and e-mail encryption.
The GuardianEdge Technologies (GE) acquisition will provide Symantec with direct access to GE's large base of government customers. Certainly GE has a client base in the commercial sector as well. There is clearly some overlap between PGP and GE products. Both provide a lot of value to the end users in terms of security features.
Healthcare organizations that are looking to comply with the HITECH Act and protect PHI using encryption will be very pleased. Symantec has a significant market share in endpoint security products and those customers that need to deploy encryption will be happy to entrust the Symantec brand to their organization.
Tags: guardianedge, PGP. acquistion, Symantec
