Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. suffered a setback in March
when it was forced to drop a bid to
acquire Sourcefire. But its newly-announced plan to purchase
NFR Security should set things right, analysts say.
 | | | | | Check Point has been missing a
piece of the market and needed this technology.
Greg Young,
research vice presidentGartner
Inc. |
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The enterprise security vendor said Tuesday that it has signed a
definitive agreement to acquire Rockville, Md.-based
NFR Security for approximately $20 million. The company said it
will incorporate NFR's intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS)
technologies into Check Point's family of firewall, VPN and
security management products.
Since Check Point has been lacking in the IDS/IPS department,
analysts believe that's a wise move.
"Check Point has been missing a piece of the market and needed
this technology," said Greg Young, a research vice president for
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. "Their choices were to develop
it themselves or acquire someone, and I think they did the right
thing by going with NFR."
The move is equally good for NFR, since the company has
struggled to get its name out there, Young said, adding, "Check
Point will be getting good IDS/IPS technology and NFR will get the
business boost it has needed."
Paul Stamp, a senior security analyst for Cambridge, Mass.-based
Forrester Research Inc., said Check Point has struggled to build
its credibility in the deep packet inspection and intrusion
prevention market place and that "their application intelligence
capabilities just weren't cutting it." He believes the NFR
acquisition will give Check Point the breakthrough it has been
looking for.
The acquisition has left some industry experts wondering if
Check Point is trying to make up for the ground it lost when the
$225 million Sourcefire deal fell through.
That deal was
unpopular among Sourcefire customers who use the vendor's
widely popular open source Snort IDS tool. Some feared Check Point
would allow Snort to languish. And some said it has done so since
it acquired the popular free ZoneAlarm desktop firewall application
as part of its $205 million purchase of Zone Labs in 2003. Others
worry that Check Point would seek to further monetize Snort by no
longer allowing it to be an open source product.
Check Point, an Israeli firm, ran into trouble with the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which
scrutinized the deal amid concerns that foreign ownership of Snort
would threaten U.S. national security. Snort is used by the U.S.
Department of Defense, among others.
Stamp believes the NFR acquisition is Check Point's way of
making up for the Sourcefire debacle.
"This is definitely a make-up game, but arguably this is better
for Check Point than the Sourcefire deal," Stamp said in an email
exchange. "The IPS market is consolidating down to a few players so
there are a few good bargains out there, and Check Point seems to
have picked one up."
Pete Lindstrom, a senior analyst with Midvale, Utah-based Burton
Group, shared Stamp's assessment.
"At one-tenth the price of Sourcefire, this is a clear
technology bargain," he said in an email exchange. "It is safe to
assume that Check Point wants a company in this space and there
really aren't many left. However, I suspect NFR was in the same
boat to accept such a low offer. They (NFR) were pioneers in their
space but really got left behind market-traction wise."
Gil Shwed, founder and chief executive officer of Check Point,
agreed in a statement that the NFR deal is the next logical step in
his company's evolution.
"This acquisition is an important step in Check Point's
leadership strategy to continuously raise the level of security
available to enterprises for protecting their mission-critical
networks. It is part of our focus on two primary layers: network
security as our core platform and our recently announced expansion
into data security," he said.