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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