Symantec Said Buying Conficker-Killer

Symantec is going to announce the acquisition of Mi5 Networks, a niche vendor in the the Internet security space this week, according to 451Group analyst Brenon Daly.

Mi5, named after the famed British intelligence service, sells appliances that help organizations protect their networks and, in particular, are supposed to help ensure that corporate networks don’t become havens for bot-nets like Conficker, rogue programs that remotely commandeer computers for purposes like propagating viruses or stealing confidential information.

The acquisition would help Symantec compete with the likes of Cisco, which acquired network security vendor IronPort in 2007 and McAfee (which acquired Secure Computing in late 2008).

In a report issued last week, Symantec said it had observed “an average of 75,158 active bot-infected computers per day in 2008, an increase of 31 percent from the previous period.” It would be no surprise if Symantec were to use the RSA security conference being held this week to announce that it will help bring the market relief from this increasingly pernicious Internet scourge.

Daly also notes personal relationships between key executives at both companies that make this marriage likely.

Among [Mi5's] early backers is Sunil Paul, who founded Brightmail… the very same company that was run by current Symantec CEO Enrique Salem… [and] Mi5 is currently headed by Doug Camplejohn, a former executive at Vontu, which Symantec acquired in late 2007.

Appliances like the one sold by Mi5 are supposed to be able to perform deeper network analysis than traditional security software because they don’t suck up network resources while doing their work, but those niche vendors often have a hard time bringing their products to market because they don’t have the sales channels or the resources to build them. This disadvantage is compounded by the current economic environment, where credit is difficult for smaller businesses to come by.

As I noted in a recent post, the recent Conficker security scare can only make cutting edge info-tech security software more attractive to established vendors and their paying customers. Daly told me that start-ups in the Internet security field have developed “amazing technology,” while the established security software vendors are well-funded and have well-oiled sales channels.