Forcepoint acquire Intel Security’s firewall business

Following the acquisition of Intel’s firewall business Stonesoft, cybersecurity firm Raytheon Websense announces its rebrand this month, with the three companies now to be collectively known as Forcepoint.

Forcepoint highlights that the new purchase will expand the cloud and hybrid capabilities of their Triton security platform, having acquired Stonesoft’s next generation firewall (NGFW) and Sidewinder proxy firewall technologies.

Consultants, Managers and IT Directors are naturally nervous when a technology vendor they use/own merges or sells the business to another vendor. The changes, concerns and ultimately, the future strategies are all in question?

However, in this case, Forcepoint not only acquired the NGFW code, but more importantly, the brains behind the technology; the Research & Development and support teams. “This wholesale transaction not only ensures the knowledge and skills to both progress and enhance their roadmap, but also to better support the existing customer base.” Says Mike Batters, Technical Director at NETprotocol.

As part of Forcepoint’s launch to the market, they have released three new core products.

The first is called SureView Insider Threat and is focussed on insider threat detection, giving customers an early warning system, automatically identifying the riskiest users within an organisation, as well as information received from Forcepoint’s data loss prevention solution.

The second is cloud based protection for Microsoft’s Office 365 with Forcepoint’s Triton platform. And the last new offering comes as a direct result of the Stonesoft acquisition, and will see Forcepoint deliver the NGFW as a product.

Forcepoint has confirmed that for existing clients of Raytheon, Websense and Intel Security’s Stonesoft, nothing is expected to change. Contractually everything stands and the solution that is currently in place will continue until is natural expiration.

The only difference will be the benefit of working with a much larger and solid company with greater financial stability and strong prospects for growth in the future.

“Ultimately, Raytheons acquisitions, combined with their sheer scale and heritage are, in my opinion a declaration of intent to build an enterprise class, tier 1 security solution portfolio for their clients.” Mike adds.

Supported by a focussed, specialist vendor such as this, with high expectations and an excellent reputation, it makes for a very compelling proposition. From the information available and discussions to date, NETprotocol view this as a positive change and believe our clients will benefit from these recent developments.