Dell Sells RSA To Symphony Technology Group Consortium For $2.075 Billion (zdnet.com) 17
Dell said it will sell RSA to a consortium led by Symphony Technology Group for $2.075 billion in a move to simplify its portfolio of businesses. From a report: RSA provides security technologies for threat detection and response, identity and access management as well as fraud prevention. RSA has more than 12,500 customers. According to Dell, the all-cash deal includes RSA Archer, RSA NetWitness Platform, RSA SecureID, RSA Fraud and Risk Intelligence and the RSA Conference. The Symphony Technology Group consortium includes the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers') and AlpInvest Partners (AlpInvest). Dell's deal to sell RSA comes as Broadcom acquired Symantec Enterprise Security business for $10.7 billion and Symantec's consumer unit became NortonLifelock. McAfee, formerly part of Intel, is now independent with a new CEO.
RSA (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Norton's not much better, they overload the internet every few years to "test security" with a botnet made of customers and former customers.
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You'll need to look up the past in Nexus to get the full story, but here's a quick recap:
RSA was convinced to allow government holes by VP Gore, which left RSA products mostly abandoned. Their trademark RSA Key product is now replaced by OTP software on cell phones.
Norton has been tarnished by scandals every few years, including their almost acceptance of a sex-for-software deal in MA, and also sometimes blamed for hacker-like behavior like testing random IPs for security.
Now that the patent has expired... (Score:2)
RSA Accepted an eight-figure bribe from the NSA to backdoor their products. I don't think this company is worth the price of used underwear.
Now that the patent on cryptosystems based on the RSA algorithm has expired, all they really had was their software base and reputation.
Given the backdoor deal they've lost their reputation and their software base is suspect. So I agree with you on the "used underwear" rating. (Even some porn star's used underwear would be worth more.)
Somebody offered Dell what EMC pa
Re: (Score:2)
The RSA Conference, now falling into the travel restrictions zone that hosed MWC and others, was one of the good assets, a cash cow.
And the other RSA assets aren't bad performers, despite the debacle of letting the NSA in the back door. IMHO, Dell has the better end of this deal, but RSA is by no means dead..... just mightily unloved and for good reasons, if now moldy.
Smart move on Dell's side (Score:5, Funny)
But I don't wonder at all why they accepted. B-) (Score:2)
With RSA's integrity compromise still in the minds of people (hopefully at least), I wonder who would pay good money for that kind of product and company.
On the other hand, I don't wonder at all why Dell took the money and ran. B-)
Reminder: Don't Trust RSA (Score:4, Interesting)
Closed-source security software is susceptible to backdoors via bribery:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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As is open source [susceptible to backdoors via bribery] ...
But at least, with open source, the open crypto community members can examine the code and potentially identify the weakness - and then they or you can fix it, or at least know to switch to another system.
Doesn't mean they WILL - or will do so in a timely fashion if they do. But it's a big feather in the cap for first to find and publish a weakness, and it's much easier when the source is open than if the investigators have to start by reverse-eng
No Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
EMC and now Dell have never integrated RSA with the rest of the company. RSA employees have separate badges, and it was always managed as a separate division. Dell has been looking to pay off the debt they took on with the purchase of EMC, and this is one more step. This says two things to me: First, Dell doesn't view RSA's growth as exceeding the interest on Dell's debt (not surprising, as the sales price is roughly the same as what EMC bought it for years ago). Second, Dell isn't able to use RSA to attract customers to the rest of their products.
The only thing that surprises me about this is that it took this long to happen. I would say that's an indication that not many companies were interested in RSA, perhaps proving again that security is almost always an afterthought in our industry.
Hopefully the buyers have a vision to make RSA into something more than Dell would do.
Disclaimer: I work for DellEMC, but I have no inside information on this deal, and apart from the detail on separate badges, all of the above is based on outside speculation.
Name change is next (Score:2)
Typically when you muck up you just change the name of your company and keep doing business as usual. (see: Diebold).
I'm guessing that a foreign company will buy them and insert even more backdoors.
RSA has any value at all? (Score:2)
That is surprising. After all, a _security_ company that was both willing to push back-doored crypto and had some spectacular failures like when the seeds for their tokens were stolen should have anywhere between zero and significantly negative value.
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If I recall correctly, these compromises occurred after RSA Laboratories was sold to EMC.
I had the pleasure (yes, I mean that) of working with RSA Laboratories back in the mid to late '90s. At the time, our startup had a sweetheart, mom & pop shop licensing deal for BSAFE and TIPEM libraries. At the time, licensing was a fixed $10K until we hit $250K worth of sales when royalties kicked in. They were also willing to work with us to make their libraries compatible with the other development tools we u
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RSA was sold to EMC and, I think, lost/sold their soul when they did.
Probably. Their reputation was pretty good before.