Users fail to see full security picture

Businesses are still not ready to take an enterprise approach to security, according to leading vendor Network Associates (NAI).

Despite consolidation in the market - including the $975m buy-out of security firm Axent by anti-virus specialist Symantec last week - NAI claims customers are still divided in their strategy for ecommerce security.

Symantec's acquisition will enable the combined company to develop comprehensive security products, combining lucrative anti-virus software with firewall, encryption and VPN (virtual private network) technology.

But NAI anti-virus business development manager, Rob Eatwell, claims customers rejected a similar approach by NAI after its acquisition of Dr Solomon's in 1998. "The security market has not yet matured to the same extent as the anti-virus market," he said.

According to Eatwell, NAI found its enterprise offerings were less popular with customers than the traditional approach to anti-virus and security as separate products. "The reality is, there are still two different sets of customers. You can't take the 'one size fits all' approach - you need to be focused," Eatwell added.

But Tom Fawcett, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said the market is changing. "NAI may have had difficulties in the past," he said, "but the customer mindset is changing. Now security is becoming more of an issue, the enterprise view of it will grow."

"The security market is very diverse - it's broken up into content security, communications security, PKI etc. with lots of different champions in each area," Fawcett added. "But, that's probably going to change."

A spokesman for Symantec said the company will not be taking a purely enterprise approach. "We still think customers want to buy best of breed. Our joint offerings will be scalable and modular. However, we are seeing customers with a very broad security requirement," he said.

Paola Bassanese, analyst at Ovum, agreed that the move was a good one for Symantec, particularly because of Axent's expertise in the growing market for intrusion detection. "Most security tools don't interoperate," she said. "So with this type of merger, we have a better chance of seeing a full enterprise solution."