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ibm Internet security firm to grow
Email Print Normal font Large font By PATRICK GRAY
October 24, 2006
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Internet Security Systems will expand its 30-strong Australian workforce this year as the cyber security vendor grows to cope with global demand, chief executive Tom Noonan said at the launch of its operations centre in Brisbane last week.

Although he says the centre is part of a $120 million global chain of monitoring stations, Mr Noonan declined to say what it cost to establish the local operation or whether it would be staffed around the clock.

ISS, which employs 1300 worldwide and is being bought by IBM for $US1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) expects to nearly double its workforce next year. It started its Australian operations in Brisbane six years ago.

Mr Noonan says Australia's 30 per cent annualised growth and customers' reluctance to use managed services overseas prompted the building of the local centre. The centre monitors customers' network devices and software such as intrusion prevention sensors.

Analyst firm Gartner has reservations about the IBM acquisition due to be completed on October 24. A Gartner report said: "ISS's managed security services provider offerings are a good fit for IBM, whose offering has performed poorly for years.

The acquisition of ISS's network security product seems less logical."

IBM will then compete with networking vendors such as Cisco, Juniper and 3Com, the report says, and the company's withdrawal from the firewall market in 2001 shows its history in the network security products world is shaky.

But, Mr Noonan says, information security is a priority for Big Blue: "IBM lists enterprise security as one of its . . . growth platforms for the next 10 years," he says.

Ron Gula, co-founder and chief technology officer of US-based competitor Tenable Network Security, predicts more mergers and acquisitions as "many small technology companies are going to exit" the market.

Mr Gula, who also founded Network Security Wizards (bought in 2000 by Enterasys Networks) sees the IBM deal as an opportunity for him. Tenable develops vulnerability scanning software that competes with ISS products. "It's good for us," he says. "People who really like ISS and the IBM deal are going to stay with that (but) people who are thinking about going with someone else, it's going to accelerate those decisions."