Just got off the news conference announcing IBM’s purchase of Watchfire. While it may not seem immediately apparent why a huge company like IBM would be interested in a company as small as Watchfire, with only 189 employees and 800 customers, growing corporate security concerns, and also the growing concerns of IBM’s customers, pretty much makes this deal inevitable.

I’m certain everyone is well aware that not only are security and data attacks on the rise, but so is the news coverage of these attacks. So when you have both attacks and the perception of these attacks growing rapidly, a company with the size and reach of IBM pretty much has to act.

IBM’s purchase of Watchfire, subject to standard regulatory approval, gets IBM closer to offering a true end-to-end security solution. While IBM Rational already provides clients with comprehensive software quality management solutions, which includes the ability to perform functional and performance tests in software development, Watchfire adds security, compliance and quality testing to ensure business integrity before applications go live.

As Danny Sabbah, IBM Rational Software GM, said, this is just IBM responding to customer needs. He added that he has been hearing about his customers security concerns all the time.

And with the 2005 CSI/FRI Survey that found internal security attacking costing U.S. businesses $400 billion a year, businesses are right to be concerned. It certainly doesn’t hurt that this sector is expected to grow 68% annually. Altogether, except for hackers and cybercriminals, this deal is a win-win.

Tag: security, compliance testing, software development,

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In news from Infoworld, IBM just completed their buyout bid for Internet Security Systems, Inc. Yesterday IBM's shareholders approved a $1.3 billion dollar cash offer for ISS, the Atlanta company whose security services aim to protect networks, servers, desktops and laptops by preemptively blocking Web threats like spam and viruses. IBM announced that ISS will become part of IBM Global Technology Services division and plans to keep their 1,300 employees.

Also on Monday, McAfee announced their security risk management strategy which entails acquiring Onigma for $20 million, an Israel-based data leak prevention vendor, which rounds out their buyouts of Foundstone, Preventsys and Citadel.

McAfee plans to offer an integrated solution that addressed both security and compliance issues. Vimal Solanki, senior direction of marketing, said to CRN Canada, “What’s challenging about these areas is that they’re largely being attacked on an individual basis. There’s little automation between the two, and that’s becoming an inhibitor.”

Onigma uses agent software to prevent confidential data from slipping out (data leaks becoming a key compliance issue) through copy/paste, screen capture, printed documents and USB drives. This provides a more complete solution then a mere gateway approach, which only sees traffic as it’s leaving the network and can’t look within an enterprise.

Tags:IBM, McAfee

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