Symantec Completes Acquisition of PGP and GuardianEdge

Symantec Corp. has completed its acquisition of PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge Technologies, Inc., two privately-held leaders in the email and data encryption markets. The acquisition agreements between Symantec and PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge were announced on April 29, 2010.

These acquisitions extend Symantec’s ability to help customers secure and manage their most critical information. By bringing together PGP and GuardianEdge’s standards-based encryption capabilities for smartphones, full-disk, email, file, folder and removable media with Symantec’s endpoint security and data loss prevention offerings, Symantec has the broadest set of integrated data protection solutions to address the needs of all customer segments from the largest enterprises and government organizations to small businesses and individuals.

"Delivering a safe and secure online marketplace that allows millions of sellers and buyers to successfully transact on eBay is a top priority for us," said Dave Cullinane, chief information security officer, eBay. "With its focus on an information-centric approach to security, Symantec is well positioned to help eBay secure confidential information as it’s shared across mobile devices and stored in cloud environments."

"We are already seeing an evolution toward ubiquitous encryption of sensitive data in applications, servers, databases, storage and networks," said Jon Oltsik, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "This will certainly protect data confidentiality but encryption and key management could quickly overwhelm IT organizations with new tasks and tools. With the combination of GuardianEdge and PGP, Symantec can address these issues as a one-stop-shop for enterprise encryption and key management. This should make Symantec especially popular with large security-focused organizations in financial services, health care, the federal government and other industries."

"Businesses are looking for an information-centric approach to IT security, one that enables them to understand where their important information assets are and control who has access to them," said Francis deSouza, senior vice president, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec. "With the integration of PGP and GuardianEdge, Symantec will deliver on the promise of making data protection more intelligent, policy-driven and easy-to-manage."