WatchGuard Technologies Inc, the US security vendor, has acquired BeadleNet LLC, a Laguna Hills, California security start-up focusing on the small office home office (SOHO) market. The $4.8m acquisition, involving $3.4m in cash with $1m pending the achievement of certain performance targets, will enable Seattle-based WatchGuard to target the SOHO sector with its outsourced security service.
BeadleNet has a firewall product for asymmetric digital subscriber line and cable modem technology. WatchGuard VP for international sales Simon Webb said that the two product sets would be integrated and available as part of the LiveSecurity managed service in the first quarter next year.
Watchguaris is also keen to expand its offering to the small and medium-sized business sector, which it sees as a largely untapped pool of users. Webb said that there are 8.2 million businesses connected to the internet and only 600,000 firewalls, leaving a massive margin of users with a need, or at least a gap, for security. LiveSecurity caters for users like this which cannot afford to hire specially trained security staff.
WatchGuard released version 4.0 of its LiveSecurity service, which features higher strength 56-bit encryption to replace the 40-bit, firewall, options on virtual private networks and spam filters as well as 12 months subscription to the outsourced security service, the appliance and subscription costing $950 per year. WatchGuard currently has 300 resellers, five European systems integrators and 17 internet service providers, including PSInet, Verio and Interpath, signed up to offer the service and is aiming to get to 30 ISPs by the end of the year.
Although security vendors such as Internet Security Systems and networking firms like Lucent and Cisco are contesting the managed security space, WatchGuard reckons that its appliance, which takes an hour to install, will attract customers with its simplicity.
