Dell announced today that it will acquire network security firm SecureWorks. This is another acquisition aimed at preventing its smaller and mid-sized business customers from migrating to public cloud providers like Amazon.

SecureWorks gives users with a number of tools to help manage security threats and control access to local networks. The service includes email encryption, and SecureWorks provides a degree of consulting for its customers. The entire security suite is deployed on in-house servers.

Most of Dell’s business is in providing companies with private, in-house cloud servers that run multiple computers. Dell has said before that it doesn’t feel threatened by the public cloud — a bunch of services that offload heavy-duty computing to remote servers and stream the results through the Internet. Dell brought in around $1.8 billion last quarter off sales of its servers. Dell’s Data Center Solutions is the third-largest distributor of servers using chips from Intel and AMD.

But companies buying Dell’s servers have to bear the costs of keeping those private cloud servers up and running. That isn’t the case with public cloud servers from companies like Amazon and Rackspace. Dell’s strategy lately has been to reduce those upkeep headaches and keep companies interested in the private cloud. It recently acquired Compellent, which provides some software to help companies store and access their data more efficiently on private cloud servers, as part of that strategy.

Dell’s largest customers, like OnLive and Microsoft, are probably going to stick with the private cloud because it is faster. Dell still needs to bring in some new incentives for smaller and mid-sized businesses that are flocking to public cloud services because they are typically cheaper. One way to do that is to draw attention to the notion that public cloud services aren’t as secure as private servers because the information has to be transmitted across the Internet.

This is the second big acquisition in a few months for Dell. SecureWorks raked in about $120 million in revenue last year and has around 1,500 customers running its software. The financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it probably wasn’t cheap with that kind of revenue.

Security firms are another big acquisition target. SecureWorks acquired VeriSign and DNS Limited, other security providers, last year. Intel also dropped $7.7 billion to buy McAfee, one of the largest providers of computer security software, last year.

Atlanta, Ga.-based SecureWorks was founded in 1999 and has around 700 employees. It has raised $31.5 million in funding.

Tags: cloud computing, private cloud, public cloud, security

Companies: Dell, SecureWorks

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Deutsche Bank software software analyst Todd Raker today offers an update for Fortinet (FTNT), Check Point Software (CHKP) and other security software vendors, writing that the industry is seeing “stable” growth expectations, with “channel checks” indicating growth projections for 2011 remained in Q4 about what they were when he checked [...]

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3VR, a provider of video recording and search technology, announced today that it has raised $17 million in its fifth round of funding led by Menlo Ventures.

The company sells a number of video recorders that have scanning and recognition features built-in. Its products are mainly geared toward businesses looking to beef up their security. The software lets businesses review videos and use facial recognition and license plate recognition to track down criminals. The software can also count the number of people in a frame and detect slight changes in movement. 3VR’s software is also open and allows for custom applications using its application programming interface (APIs).

3VR’s video recorders also sync up with a crime prevention network called CrimeDex. It’s a network of around 1,000 law enforcement agencies and other organizations that aggregates data about known and suspected criminals. 3VR recorder owners can immediately upload video to the CrimeDex network and essentially crowdsource the detective work.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and DAG Ventures also participated in this latest funding round, and former SUN Microsystems executive Aisling MacRunnels is joining 3VR as its chief marketing officer, 3VR announced today. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company has around 600 clients, but plans on using the funding to expand internationally.

3VR previously raised $42 million across four rounds of funding. Its last round, worth $12 million, closed just last year. The latest round brings its total funding up to $59 million. Its investors include Menlo Ventures, DAG Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, In-Q-Tel and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

[Photo: p200eric]

Tags: security, video recording, video scanning

Companies: 3VR

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Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, has insisted for the past decade that his firm Intellectual Ventures has been collecting patents to enable new inventions.

But today, Intellectual Ventures has sued nine big technology companies in its first-ever patent-infringement lawsuits. The company filed suits in federal court in Delaware against Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Check Point Software Technologies in computer security. It also sued chip makers Elpida Memory, Hynix Semiconductor, Altera, Lattice Semiconductor and Microsemi (which recently bought Actel).

Is it time to call Myhrvold a patent troll? Patent trolls buy patents and sue companies in order to get royalties. They tend not to create anything innovative. The answer seems to be yes.

“Over the years, Intellectual Ventures has successfully negotiated license agreements with some of the top technology companies in the world,” said Melissa Finocchio, Intellectual Venture’s chief litigation counsel, in a press release. “However, some companies have chosen to ignore our requests for good faith negotiations and discussions.”

In an interview this morning, she added, “We can’t control how people want to label us. We are no different from any other company in the high-tech space that owns intellectual property.”

Actually, a lot of other tech companies make stuff. In that respect, they can be counterattacked if they sue. Without its own product companies, Intellectual Ventures is immune from such responses.

Bellevue, Wash.-based Intellectual Ventures has amassed thousands of patents over the years and has hired lots of experts to create inventions in-house which are then licensed to other companies. Myrhvold is a polymath and has a funny, boisterous laugh. He has expertise in geophysics, physics, math, economics, photography, and paleontology. But perhaps my favorite thing about him is he is a “sous vide” gourmet chef (where you cook food inside a vacuum-sealed plastic bag).

He has insisted over the years that he is not a patent troll. His company has indeed created a lot of groundbreaking technology in the fields of medicine, computer science and chips. Please answer our poll below and explain your choice in the comments section.

Online Surveys – Zoomerang.com

Tags: patent troll

Companies: Altera, Check Point Software Technology, Intellectual Ventures, McAfee, symantec

People: Melissa Finocchio, Nathan Myhrvold

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Lost or stolen laptops cost corporations $2.1 billion a year, according to a study of 329 companies. The loss per company is $6.4 million per year.

Security experts say that represents a huge risk for corporations that their lost data will fall into the wrong hands. Wikileaks’ publication of state secrets has demonstrated what can happen when the government loses control of its data. That should be a wake-up call for corporations, who are also extremely vulnerable given loss rates.

Collectively, the companies studied said their employees lost more than 86,000 laptops during one year alone. The study by Intel and the Ponemon Institute showed that the cost per laptop was $49,246, a number that includes the cost of replacements and investigations related to the loss. The losses also include costs related to lost intellectual property, reduced productivity and legal and regulatory charges.

In a three-year span, the chance that a laptop will be lost or stolen is 5 to 10 percent. About 25 percent of lost laptops are due to theft, and another 15 percent are likely lost to theft. Some 60 percent are simply missing.

Those numbers are staggering. Intel clearly wants to do something about this, as it acquired security vendor McAfee for $7.68 billion earlier this year.

While encryption of the laptop’s hard disk is an easy solution, many employees avoid it because of perceived cost, which is fairly minimal, and the belief that it would slow down the laptop. While it does slow the computer’s boot time by seconds, the slowdown isn’t that noticeable given the advanced state of encryption today, said Malcolm Harkins, Intel chief information security officer.

“We have such an easy fix that can reduce a ton of risk,” said Kevin Beaver, an independent security consultant and author of Hacking for Dummies, on a panel today held by Intel.

The percentage of losses is highest in the education and research arena, where 10.8 percent of all laptops are lost or stolen during a three-year period. For health and pharmaceutical companies, the number is 10.1 percent. The public sector is 9.1 percent, while technology and software is 5.7 percent and financial services is 5.2 percent.

“My advice is, be careful about your data and use technologies to protect your data as well,” said Anand Pashupathy, general manager of anti-theft services at Intel. “You’d be amazed at how many companies do not have encryption.”

About 46 percent of lost laptops were reported to contain sensitive or confidential data. But only 30 percent were encrypted, 29 percent were backed up, and 10 percent had some kind of anti-theft feature such as Lojack, which can track a lost laptop and disable it remotely.

About 33 percent of laptops are lost during travel. Some 43 percent are lost off-site. About 12 percent are lost at work, and 12 percent are lost in unknown locations. The largest number are lost in transit.

The problem has been around for a while, but it’s a tough one to solve.

“There’s a huge gap between security employees and senior leadership,” said Larry Ponemon, co-author of the study.

Employees are also pretty absent-minded. One employee lost 11 laptops in two years. In the case of Wikileaks, an Army private with computer skills is suspected of leaking critical documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as secret U.S. diplomatic cables.  A video about the study is below.

Tags: laptop theft, laptops

Companies: Intel, Ponemon Institute

People: Kevin Beaver, Larry Ponemon, Malcolm Hawkins

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Some companies might call it a victory when they ship 14.1 million phones. Apple apparently takes it as a sign that it needs to barge into another company’s market space.

Apple could be making a move into the enterprise space after hiring five executives in the past year and a half that specialized in marketing Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phone, one of the most popular phones in the world for business professionals.

That shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise, as Apple has always been a bit of a silent powerhouse in the enterprise market. The iPhone has taken the lead in enterprise phone sales, if you discount RIM’s BlackBerry — which has a dominant share of the enterprise market and around 46 million customers. The iPhone 4 accounted for more than 30 percent of mobile device activations for enterprise purposes, and more than 10 percent of activations were iPads, if you discount RIM’s presence in the enterprise market.

The iPad, Apple’s tablet computer, is particularly popular among the largest companies in the world on the Fortune 100 list — about 50 percent of them are either using the iPad or are rolling it out. An analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray said Apple could probably sell 21 million iPads next year as a result of its presence in the enterprise space. Maynard Um of UBS Investment Research said earlier this month that Apple could sell up to 28 million iPads in 2011, as well.

Apple’s Mac computers are also becoming increasingly popular among enterprise users. Apple’s sales to government organizations grew 201 percent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Its enterprise sales as a whole grew 50 percent in the second quarter when compared to the same quarter a year earlier – compared to an average 16 percent across all companies.

And it’s a good time to jump into the enterprise market. RIM is struggling a bit trying to comply with government requests for access to private corporate data. India, as well as a handful of other countries, threatened to ban BlackBerry services if RIM did not comply with demands to make enterprise email and messages available for government viewing in August. RIM has said time and again that it cannot physically decrypt the data. It then doubled back and said it would allow the Indian government to view that information.

So there could be some concerns about the security of the BlackBerry messaging service among corporate users that need to keep their email messages secure. Apple hasn’t publicly offered any kind of security guarantee — but there aren’t a number of countries ready to ban the phones, either. So the new hires come at a fortuitous time for Apple, when it has a chance to capitalize on RIM’s security woes.

Tags: corporate communications, enterprise sales

Companies: Apple, Research In Motion

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Symantec (SYMC) shares are trading higher this morning following a New York Post report which says activist shareholders have been snapping up the security software company’s shares, and may be pressured to split up. The story says that the activists also have been speaking to potential suitors and other large [...]

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U.S. Bank, the country’s fifth largest bank, will be the first major bank to use a new breed of secure and cheap online payment system. If it becomes widely accepted, it could grease the skids of electronic commerce.

Developed by NACHA, a secure online payments association, the Secure Vault Payments system can be used to link consumers to their financial institutions via merchants and billers. The payments startup eWise serves as the exclusive network provider for the system.

Businesses can use the system for real-time authorization of funds transfers with payment guarantees at a lower cost than is available with current payment systems. For consumers, there is no need for credit checks, sign-ups,  approval process, and extra fees.

With the new system, consumers initiate payments on a merchant’s or biller’s web site and are automatically redirected to their own bank’s online banking platform. They can choose which bank account they want to use to make the payment. Then they are returned to the merchant or biller’s site, where they get a payment confirmation.

During the process, the banks can authenticate the consumer and provide the business with a real-time authorization and confirmation of payment. The consumer benefits by not having to share any financial account information with the merchant or biller, adding a new measure of security to online transactions. The merchant and biller do not have to securely store payer account information, said Jeff Jones, executive vice president at U.S. Bank.

A key part of the system is eWise, the exclusive network provider and creator of the online banking electronic payments platform (OBeP). NACHA participated as part of a drive to reduce paper checks and increase the use of the ACH electronic network, which links every financial institution in the nation.

The deal with U.S. Bank is an important one for NACHA, which is also signing up other partners to provide the Secure Vault Payments, said NACHA president and chief executive Janet Estep. NACHA has more than 11,000 financial institutions as members.

Alex Grinberg, chief executive of eWise, said the company is working closely with U.S. Bank to make sure the system is successful. The system has been in the works for the past 18 months. In a pilot test with the University of Georgia, about 17 percent of students are using Secure Vault Payments to pay their tuition, and 48 percent of users have used it more than five times.

eWise was founded in 1999 and has 50 employees. It has been working with NACHA on Secure Vault Payments for several years. Rivals include PayPal and a number of smaller startups. eWise has raised $12.1 million from Balderton Capital, Total Technology Ventures and Stanley S. Shuman of Allen & Co.

Tags: Secure Vault Payments

Companies: balderton capital, ewise, NACHA, paypal, total technology ventures, U.S. Bank

People: Janet Estep, Jeff Jones, Stanley S. Shuman

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Fortinet (FTNT) shares are sharply higher in early trading on a Bloomberg report that says the security systems company has been approached by IBM (IBM) about a possible takeover. The story is sourced to “two people close to the situation.” The story says talks “may be at an advanced stage.” [...]

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SourceFire (FIRE) shares are down sharply after hours on disappointing Q4 guidance.
For the third quarter, the security software company reported revenue of $36.2 million and non-GAAP profits of 18 c ents a share, ahead of the Street consensus at $35.7 million and 15 cents.
However, for Q4, FIRE sees revenue of [...]

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