Symantec to acquire PGP, GuardianEdge

Symantec, a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions, today announced it had signed agreements to acquire PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge Technologies, Inc. These companies are privately-held leaders in the email and data encryption market. Under the terms of the agreements, Symantec will acquire PGP Corporation for about $300 million and Guardian-Edge for approximately $70 million, a release said.

The agreements are subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and are expected to close during the June quarter, it added. By bringing together PGP and GuardianEdge’s standards-based encryption capabilities for full-disk, removable media, email, file, folder and smartphone, with Symantec’s endpoint security, data loss prevention and gateway security offerings, Symantec will have the broadest set of integrated data protection solutions, it said.

Together these acquisitions will expand Symantec’s addressable security market opportunity and will position the company as a leader in the fast growing encryption market, which is estimated to reach $1.7 billion in 2013. Symantec Senior Vice-President (Enterprise Security Group) Francis deSouza said: “With these acquisitions, we can further protect information by using encryption in an intelligent and policy-driven way to give the right users access to the right information, enabling the trust that individuals and organisations need to operate confidently.”