In a move that surprised the industry as RSA Conference 2015 kicked off in San Francisco, Raytheon and Websense announced a $1.9 billion deal with Vista Equity Partners to form a new company combining Websense with Raytheon Cyber Products.
After operating for roughly nine months under the name of Raytheon|Websense, the company today unveiled that it will now operate under a new corporate name, Forcepoint.
Under the terms of the deal, Raytheon contributed $1.9 billion (net of cash acquired) to acquire Websense, of which $600 million was to be in the form of an intercompany loan to joint venture which is now Forcepoint. After announcing the deal in April 2015, Websense CEO, John McCormack discussed the move in an interview with SecurityWeek.
Along with announcing the new Forcepoint brand, the company announced three new products, designed to address insider threats, cloud-based protection of Microsoft Office 365 and what the company is calling “massively distributed, next-generation network security.”
The company said that this month it has also finalized the acquisition of the Stonesoft next-generation firewall and Sidewinder proxy firewall technologies and teams from Intel Security.
As part of the lineup of new offerings, new SureView Insider Threat 8.0 helps customers identify the riskiest users within an organization, based on their behaviors as well as on information received from TRITON AP-DATA, the company’s data loss prevention (DLP) solution.
The company also said that its TRITON platform is now natively hosted in Microsoft Azure, and can enforce DLP for Microsoft Exchange Online in Office 365.
For network security, Forcepoint’s Stonesoft NGFW now has Common Criteria certification, and helps provide consistent visibility, responsiveness and policy enforcement across hundreds or thousands of locations with a single management console.
“Forcepoint is a new company with a comprehensive approach to addressing the evolving security needs of organizations across the globe,” said Christian Christiansen, Program Vice President, Security Products at IDC. “Most importantly, Forcepoint is focused on enabling companies to do business securely in new and exciting ways by taking advantage of cloud computing, mobility, and other disruptive technologies.”
“Forcepoint’s platform focuses on insider threat protection, cloud data protection and network security. We’re seeing clients ask for these capabilities and are excited to see how Forcepoint delivers,” said Dan Wilson, Executive Vice President of Partner Solutions for Optiv, a market-leading provider of end-to-end cyber security solutions.
Formerly a publicly traded company, Websense was taken private in May 2013 by Vista for over $900 million.
In November 2014, Raytheon acquired Blackbird Technologies, a provider communications and cybersecurity solutions to the Intelligence Community (IC), Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and intelligence organizations supporting the Department of Defense, for roughly $420 million.
Related: Websense Says Innovation Will Continue After Going Private in Buyout
