By Danny Yadron and Doug Cameron
Symantec Corp. is expanding its presence in the battle against
corporate hackers through a deal with Boeing Co., after the
aerospace-and-defense giant found it tough to win commercial deals
in the fast-growing cybersecurity business.
Boeing and other defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin
Corp. expanded their cyber offerings through dozens of small
acquisitions over the past four years, aiming to leverage their
prowess in protecting the Pentagon and their own servers through
deals with banks, retailers and others being targeted by cyber
thieves.
Symantec on Monday said it had acquired staff and technology
licenses from the Narus Inc. business Boeing bought four years ago,
hoping to use Narus's Internet-filtering technology to win
commercial deals. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
"That just didn't materialize the way we thought it was going
to," said Dewey Houck, vice president and general manager of
Boeing's Electronic & Information Solutions division.
For Symantec, best known for its Norton Antivirus software, the
deal is part of an effort to reinvent itself in a crowded and
fragmented industry tackling a surge in high-profile breaches
suffered by banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and retailers
including Target Corp.
Norton works like an immune system to block previously seen
attacks. But Symantec acknowledges that antivirus programs are less
effective against novel attacks.
Narus specializes in Internet-filtering software for
intelligence agencies. The Wall Street Journal in 2013 reported
that Narus developed technology used by the National Security
Agency's surveillance systems.
Symantec Chief Technology Officer Amit Mital said the Narus
engineers will examine the four trillion examples of malware
Symantec has seen on customers' machines to develop better
algorithms to spot skilled hackers. "People with these skills are
very, very hard to find," Mr. Mital said.
Symantec shares have risen more than 35% since it fired its
second chief executive in as many years, Steve Bennett, last March.
Since then it has promised new products and said in October it
would split into two firms--one for computer security and one for
data storage.
Boeing bought Narus, which then employed 150, in 2010, one of
several acquisitions in its push into cybersecurity. But executives
had indicated in recent months that commercial markets were proving
tough to crack.
Symantec said it interviewed more than 100 people from Narus and
ultimately hired about 65.
Boeing's planned exit from part of its commercial cybersecurity
business is the first since Chris Chadwick took over as head of its
defense and space business a year ago and launched an internal
restructuring. Boeing officials said the company will focus its
cybersecurity efforts on military and government customers and
protecting its own network.
Lockheed Martin has been the most optimistic among peers about
commercial cyber opportunities, and last year bought
Massachusetts-based Industrial Defender, which specializes in
protecting critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. Lockheed
has said its cyber business generates sales of around $1 billion a
year, though it doesn't break this down between military and
commercial clients.
Write to Danny Yadron at danny.yadron@wsj.com and Doug Cameron
at doug.cameron@wsj.com
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