Symantec Strengthens Encryption Hand

By bringing together PGP and GuardianEdge’s standards-based encryption capabilities for full-disk, removable media, e-mail, file, folder and smartphone, with Symantec’s endpoint security and data loss prevention offerings, Symantec will create a broad set of integrated data protection solutions. Symantec intends to bring together key features and functionality from each company’s offerings and standardize on the PGP key management platform in order to deliver centralized policy and key management capabilities across the entire suite of encryption solutions.

Symantec also intends to integrate the PGP key management platform into the Symantec Protection Center, which provides customers consolidated access to threat, security and operational dashboards and reporting. Integrating the PGP key management platform into the Symantec Protection Center should ease the management of endpoint security, data loss prevention and gateway security products, which are also integrated with Symantec Protection Center. Symantec says this will allow customers to more seamlessly protect information.

Hacking into e-mail and other sensitive data files has become a simple fact of life for businesses of any size. As successful hacks into major global corporations such as Google and high-level federal government agencies show, even having access to top technology and developers is not a guarantee against security breaches.

With the dispersal of data across vast global networks and its storage in online clouds and remote mobile devices, information is at more risk now than ever before. By enabling the development of a centralized, standardized platform for encryption of data in all storage and access points, Symantec is positioning itself to take a lead in this new data protection market.

Symantec will acquire PGP Corporation for a purchase price of approximately $300 million in cash and GuardianEdge for a purchase price of approximately $70 million in cash. The agreements are subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and are expected to close during the June 2010 quarter.