IBM poised to gobble Resilient Systems, says report

Rumoured acquisition comes a year after Resilient expanded into EMEA

Incident response vendor Resilient Systems is being gobbled up by IBM for more than $100m (£72m), according to a report by Xconomy.

The vendor, which helps firms respond to cyber attacks, touched down in Europe a year ago when it went by the name CO3 Systems, and counts Nebulas and NTT Com Security among its UK partners.

Citing two sources with knowledge of the deal, the report said IBM is buying the Massachusetts-based outfit, with one of the two sources putting the acquisition price at more than $100m.

Resilient last year took on a trio of ex-Symantec/PGP executives to spearhead its push into Europe and counts US cryptographer and author Bruce Schneier as its CTO.

A study carried out last year by analyst Pierre Audoin Consultants found that more security spend is shifting from traditional threat prevention and detection solutions to the kind of incident response technology Resilient offers. Currently, 23 per cent of spend goes on incident response, but this will grow to 39 per cent in two years, found the study, which was co-sponsored by Resilient.

Resilient CEO John Bruce told CRN last year that the firm is fundamentally different from other incident response vendors because it is the only one "whose centre of gravity is all about response and, when the alarm goes off, what on earth you do".

Security has been a big push area for IBM in recent years, with Big Blue leapfrogging Trend Micro to become the world's third-biggest security vendor in 2013, according to Gartner.

IBM and Resilient didn't comment in the Xconomy story. A Resilient representative said told us the firm "doesn't comment on rumours".