Defense contractor giant Raytheon has announced a $1.9 billion bid to acquire Websense, in a deal which will see the latter create a new joint venture with Raytheon Cyber Products to provide “defense-grade cybersecurity.”
Raytheon said it will provide $1.57bn of the sum in cash, with $600 million of that figure coming in the form of an inter-company loan to the JV.
Vista Equity Partners is also involved, agreeing to invest around $335 million for a 19.7% equity stake in the new company.
“Raytheon brings a deep background in defense and intelligence markets…Vista brings a deep background and significant expertise in the technology sector, particular with commercial software companies,” said Thomas Kennedy, president and CEO of Raytheon, on a webcast yesterday.
“With this venture, we’ll leverage their experience and knowledge to augment our own expertise. The combination will allow us to more effectively navigate the dynamic cybersecurity marketplace and bring defense grade solutions to a broader range of customers.”
Websense boss John McCormack claimed his firm's TRITON unified content security platform, with its real-time predictive security architecture for advanced threats, is an ideal fit wit Raytheon’s current cybersecurity portfolio.
“Raytheon cyber products will extend the TRITON platform to allow the thousands of existing customers currently using TRITON access to additional advanced capabilities,” he said on the same webcast.
“The combination of our two businesses positions us well to address the evolving cybersecurity market and gives us a significant competitive edge.”
Raytheon Cyber Products will be launching a new SureView range at RSA Conference on Tuesday.
This portfolio of products will be integrated with TRITON in a common architecture centralized around analytics, to provide end-to-end visibility of threats in the enterprise and reduce the time from breach to containment, Raytheon said.
“The ability to visualize information in context will shift the paradigm from counting and preventing threats to containing exposure and controlling threats,” said David Wajsgras, president of Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services business.
“The combined company will provide solutions that allow customers to defend, detect, decide and defeat cyber incursions.”