Clearswift's new brass plot acquisitions
Content security vendor eyes move into information governance space
Clearswift's new management are drawing up an acquisition strategy to move the Brit security vendor beyond its roots in deep content inspection.
At the behest of new private equity backers Lyceum Capital, Clearswift overhauled its top brass over the summer and now has a new chief executive, chief marketing officer, HR director and senior vice president of products, Guy Bunker.
Talking to ChannelWeb, Bunker revealed the vendor has Lyceum's backing to make targeted acquisitions and invest in its own R&D as it seeks to keep pace with recent shifts in the security landscape.
The idea is to sidestep into adjacent markets such as information governance, which Bunker predicted would be a hot topic for enterprises and SMBs alike in 2013.
"We have this very good core technology in deep content inspection and sit in a very opportune place on the boundary for most organisations," he said. "But the world is changing.
"One of the reasons both [chief executive] Heath [Davies] and I joined is that Lyceum said they would put their money where their mouth is. It wasn't just a case of buying the company, but also investing in new engineering and looking for adjacent spaces and determining whether we are best to buy or build to get into them. We are working on the M&A strategy around that now."
Bunker said Clearswift's diversification will also reflect the rise of cloud delivery models and recent proliferation of mobile devices.
Within the information governance sector, adaptive redaction is one technology Clearswift is eyeing up, Bunker added.
"Redaction is where you blackline something out of the document. Adaptive redaction is being a bit smarter about it," he explained.
Bunker also urged resellers to ready themselves for new compliance legislation coming down the pipeline that will impact their customers, particularly in terms of protecting intellectual property.
In the US, the SEC recently published some guidelines on what information firms need to protect. Bunker said this would hit mid-to-large-sized UK firms operating in the US from the middle of next year.
"Protecting things like credit card numbers and healthcare information is relatively simple to deal with, but when it comes to protecting IP, the reseller needs to understand a little bit more and where they can apply our technology," he said.
Finally, Bunker warned that "low and slow" advanced persistent threats - currently the scourge of large enterprises - will begin to move downstream to even the smallest of businesses.
"[Small businesses] need to understand that their business information is critical to them, and so is valuable to someone else," he said. "They shouldn't think this can't happen to them."
James McKee, security manager at reseller Qual, admitted his firm's partnership with Clearswift had drifted since the VAR's decision to axe its channel account managers in February.
"But from the conversations I've had, they are listening and changes are afoot to re-engage with resellers," he said.