When Fortinet acquired parts of IPLocks it was a bit of a bittersweet moment. When I started my career as an analyst, IPLocks was the first vendor client I worked with. I was tasked with covering database security and spent a fair bit of time walking clients through methods of improving their database monitoring; mostly for security in those days, since auditors hadn’t yet invaded the data center. It was all really manual, using things like triggers and stored procedures since native auditing sucked on every platform. After a few months of this I was connected with IPLocks- a small database security vendor with a tool to do exactly what I was trying to figure out how to do manually. They’d been around for a few years, but since everyone at this time thought database security was “encryption”, they bounced around the market more than usual.
Over the next few years I watched as the Database Activity Monitoring market started to take off, with more clients and more vendors jumping into the mix. IPLocks always struggled, but I felt it was more business issues than technology issues. Needless to say, they had some leadership issues at the top.
Since I hired Adrian, their CTO until the sale to Fortinet, it isn’t appropriate for me to comment on the acquisition itself. Rather, I want to talk about what this means to the DAM/ADMP market.
First up is that according to this press release, Fortinet acquired the vulnerability assessment technology, and is only licensing the activity monitoring technology. As we dig in, this is an important distinction. IPLocks is one of only two companies (the other being Application Security Inc.) with a dedicated database VA product. (Imperva and Guardium have VA capabilities, but not stand-alone commercial products). From that release, it looks like Fortinet has a broad license to use the monitoring technology, but doesn’t own that IP.
Was this a smart acquisition? Maybe- it all depends on what Fortinet wants to do.
On the surface, the Fortinet/IPLocks deal doesn’t make sense. The products are not well aligned, address different business problems, and Fortinet only owns part of the IP, with a license for the rest. But this is also an opportunity for Fortinet to grow their market and align themselves for future security needs. Should they use this as the catalyst to develop an ADMP product line, they will get value out of the acquisition. But if they fail to advance either through further acquisitions or internal development (with significant resources, and assuming their monitoring license allows) they just wasted their money. Sorry guys, now you need a WAF.
In the short term they need to learn the new market they just jumped into and refine/align the product to sell to their existing base. A lot of this will be positioning, sales training, and learning a new buying cycle. Threat management sales folks are generally unsuccessful at selling to the combined buying center focused on database security.
Then they need to build a long term strategy and extend the product into the ADMP space. There is a fair bit in their existing gateway technology base they can leverage as they add additional capabilities, but this is not just another blade on the UTM.
It’s all in their hands. This isn’t a slam dunk, but is definitely a good opportunity if they handle it right.
Comments