Dive Brief:
- Symantec announced Monday the successful completion of its Blue Coat Inc. acquisition, according to an announcement. The company originally announced the purchase in June.
- The combined company will be headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.
- As part of the deal, Blue Coat's chief executive, Greg Clark, took over as CEO of the new cybersecurity ventures after Symantec's president and CEO Michael Brown stepped down in April.
Dive Insight:
The merger creates the industry’s "largest pure play cybersecurity company," according to the announcement.
Symantec is betting that the purchase will help turn the company around following leadership changes and struggling sales.
"With Blue Coat now part of Symantec, we are well positioned to solve the industry’s most difficult challenges of securing a mobile workforce, protecting the cloud and stopping advanced threats," said Clark said in a statement.
The deal will enable Symantec—which was born and thrived under a much different cybersecurity landscape than today's climate—to modernize and add online protection services to its traditional antivirus offering. Buying Blue Coat, a company that specializes in protecting enterprises and their users from cyberthreats on networks, on the web, in the cloud or mobile, may help bring the cybersecurity firm out of its slump. Rather than traditional, and somewhat floundering security software, Blue Coat will allow the company to offer more modern services.
