Briefs: September 20, 2004

SYMANTEC STAKES OUT @STAKE

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Symantec officials said the deal was expected to close in October.

@stake boasts a security research and consulting arm, and sells security auditing and analysis products under the SmartRisk brand.

Symantec previously acquired managed security services provider Riptech for an estimated $145 million.

FORMER ENTERASYS CHIEF PLEADS GUILTY TO FRAUD
Enrique "Henry" Fiallo, former CEO of Enterasys Networks, pleaded guilty last week to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud. Prosecutors said Fiallo participated in an accounting fraud intended to inflate the company's revenue to meet Wall Street projections, which ultimately cost the company at least $20 million.

Fiallo is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 17. He could receive up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is the fourth former Enterasys executive to plead guilty to federal charges this year.

Gail Spence Luacaw, a former company vice president, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in August, while former company assistant controller Anthony Hurley and Gary Workman, former president, Asia Pacific, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in May.

Former CFO Robert Gagalis and Bruce Kay, former senior vice president of finance, have pleaded not guilty to federal charges and are scheduled to go to trial in October.

CISCO MAKES DYNAMICSOFT BUY
Cisco Systems has moved to beef up its portfolio of VoIP offerings by acquiring session initiation protocol (SIP) developer Dynamicsoft for about $55 million.

Cisco said the acquisition will improve its ability to offer service providers enhancements in next-generation VoIP applications and services, according to Cisco. Dynamicsoft's software products will be integrated with existing Cisco products, including its SIP-based BTS 10200 Softswitch.

ORACLE EARNINGS SURPASS EXPECTATIONS; NORTEL WARNS
Oracle's fiscal first-quarter earnings exceeded analysts' expectations, despite sluggish sales in a product line that the company hopes to bolster by completing its takeover of PeopleSoft.

Oracle earned $509 million, or 10 cents per share, during the three months ended in August, a 16 percent improvement from $440 million, or 8 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue for the period totaled $2.22 billion, a 7 percent increase from $2.07 billion last year.

Nortel Networks, meanwhile, said it expects third-quarter revenue to fall short of the $2.6 billion in sales the company posted in the second quarter of 2004.

RECONNEX RAPID ASSESSMENT TOOL HELPS WITH COMPLIANCE
Risk-assessment vendor Reconnex this week plans to unveil a new software program designed to determine whether companies are in compliance with corporate security policies and industry regulations.

The eRisk Rapid Assessment tool also enables solution providers to give customers visibility into the disclosure of sensitive information from both outside and inside their networks.

Pricing on the new tool, which sits on the inside of the corporate firewall, was not immediately available, but Reconnex CEO Don Massaro said eRisk Rapid Assessment would be ready for channel partners to resell immediately.

Reconnex also manufactures the G2 Content Analyzer, a security appliance that sits on the spanning port of a router, pulls off packets and reassembles them into TCP sessions, then identifies the objects within and measures them against a list of security threats and procotols.

PGP, IRONPORT JOIN FORCES TO BETTER SECURE MESSAGING
Encryption vendor PGP has teamed with e-mail security vendor IronPort Systems to make messaging more secure.

Based on a centralized policy, IronPort's C-Series e-mail appliance now can route confidential messages to a PGP Universal server for encryption, decryption and digital signatures, allowing resellers to add automatic message encryption to customer e-mail gateways.

Deployed at the network edge, the IronPort solution leverages PGP Universal to encrypt and send e-mail that in the past may have been quarantined or blocked by content filters. Phillip Dunkelberger, president and CEO of PGP, said the joint solution opens a host of new secure-messaging opportunities for solution providers to sell.

"This gives us greater policy flexibility, including the ability to encrypt based on individual sender, recipient, domain, content or format," he said. "By integrating with IronPort, we give our enterprise customers the ability to deploy PGP encryption as part of their e-mail infrastructure without disruption or added complexity."

With the solution, inbound encrypted e-mail is received by the IronPort device, routed to PGP Universal for decryption, then forwarded for scanning and security procedures, Dunkelberger said. Outbound mail policy--based on individual sender, receiver, group, domain, content or format--is applied by the IronPort device.

This is the first time that IronPort and PGP have collaborated with each other. The partnership, unveiled last week, is effective immediately.