Tech Security Upstarts Enter Fray

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/technology/upstarts-challenge-old-timers-in-lucrative-computer-security-field.html

By Nicole Perlroth
The New York Times
JAN. 14, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO -- Steve Bennett, the chief executive of the computer 
security company Symantec, is spoiling for a fight.

Symantec is still, by a pretty long stretch, the biggest in a growing pack 
of tech security companies. But like Microsoft, Mr. Bennett’s company is 
sometimes viewed as an aging, if still wealthy, outfit that can’t keep up 
with a new generation. And no one in the technology industry likes being 
labeled the old, slow rich guy.

Particularly when $67 billion is up for grabs. That’s how much companies 
were expected to spend last year on computer security.

But younger outfits with names like FireEye and Palo Alto Networks are now 
competing with Symantec and its longtime rival McAfee, which is now part 
of Intel, for a greater share of a market that is expected to swell to $87 
billion by 2016, according to Gartner, a research firm.

The pitch from the new companies is simple: Conventional security defenses 
-- like those that the antivirus software of Symantec and McAfee built 
their brands upon, as well as the network firewalls of Check Point and 
Cisco -- have proved vulnerable to determined adversaries. The biggest 
problem with that older technology, they say, is that it reacts to threats 
rather than anticipating them.

[...]

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