By Calvin Biesecker
Boeing‘s [BA] pending acquisition of cybersecurity software firm Narus, which is based in California but has regional offices around the world, will give it a global presence in the cyber sphere, a senior company official said last week.
Boeing “can’t play in a global market without global products” and Narus is there, Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems, told reporters on a media call last week.
Boeing said last Wednesday it has agreed to acquire Narus, which provides real-time analysis capabilities of Internet Protocol-based networks, further bolstering its capabilities and presence in the cybersecurity space (Defense Daily, July 8).
The primary reason for doing the deal is the “people and products” Narus has, Krone said. But Narus does do software development outside of the United States and Boeing needs global presence and reach with cybersecurity, he said.
Krone said that about half of Narus’ 150 employees are in India. The company’s customers include one-third of the world’s largest wire line and wireless telecommunications companies, he said.
On its website, Narus says that its real-time traffic intelligence system is used by various companies including Korea’s KT, Japan’s KDDI, Raytheon [RTN], Telecom Egypt, India’s Reliance, Britain’s Cable and Wireless, Saudi Telecom, U.S. Cellular [USM], Pakistan Telecom Authority and more.
Narus’ products are also used by Boeing, which has the sixth largest proprietary network in the world.
Moreover, while Boeing’s existing cyber capabilities and customers are focused on the military and intelligence community, Narus provides an entr�e into the “dot-com” domain, Krone said. He described the cyber market as still being relatively immature, similar to the “Wild West” days at the start of the commercial airline industry, lacking standards, management and order.
For the commercial Internet today, standards and security issues are all still being dealt with and determined, Krone said. Boeing believes that certain rules and structures that currently exist in the military and intelligence domains for network security such as rules for authentication will migrate to portions of the dot-com domain, he said.
Krone said that Boeing won’t pursue customers across the dot.com realm but will focus on certain areas such as financial institutions, energy companies deploying smart grids and air traffic management. Anyone with a large Internet-based networks and a deep packet inspection capability on a network with the need to analyze these for anomalies and threats is a potential customer, Krone said.
Krone also said that more than half of Narus’ customers are in the commercial sector, although the company has a good balance of commercial and military work.
Narus’ product is called NarusInsight, which the company says provides wide visibility across “heterogeneous networks” and deep analysis into multiple layers of the network.