Information security company Symantec [SYMC] on Monday said it has entered onto an agreement with Boeing [BA] to hire staff and license intellectual property (IP) from the aerospace and defense company’s Narus subsidiary, which provided cyber security products and solutions for commercial customers until ceasing operations last month.
Symantec will use the threat intelligence data it currently gathers from its millions of endpoint and attack sensors with the security and analytics expertise provided by Narus and 65 of its employees to strengthen its United Security platform.
“To accelerate our efforts, we’ve entered into an agreement with Narus, a Boeing subsidiary recognized as a leader in cybersecurity big data analytics, that will bring approximately 65 engineers and data scientists with expertise in machine learning, security, big data analytics and networking to Symantec to help us develop our platform,” Amit Mital, Symantec’s chief technology officer, said in a Jan. 12 blog posted on the company’s website. “Big data is useless unless you can apply meaning to it.”
Boeing acquired Narus in 2010. The company had 150 employees at the time. Narus had capabilities in real-time network traffic and analysis and a global customer based of commercial clients, particularly in the telecommunications sector (Defense Daily, July 12, 2010)
“When we acquired Narus in 2010, we did so expecting a number of new market opportunities to emerge for the company’s unique set of commercial enterprise cybersecurity and Big Data products and services,” Andy Lee, a spokesman for Boeing’s Electronics & Information Solutions division, said in an email. “When those opportunities did not materialize as anticipated, we looked for other ways to leverage the impressive talent pool and intellectual property developed by Narus.”
While Boeing will no longer be serving the commercial space with its cyber security solutions, the company will still be providing these capabilities to its defense and government customers.
“Boeing will leverage the impressive IP developed by Narus in support of current and future defense and security customers,” Lee stated.