Network Associates makes bid for Trusted Information Systems

Santa Clara, Calif.

Network Associates, Inc. last week announced plans to purchase Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (TIS) for $300 million. The stock-based buy gives Network Associates TIS' Gauntlet firewall, the Stalker intrusion-detection system and TIS' encryption key-recovery expertise.

The acquisition, expected to be completed within 90 days, comes on the heels of Network Associates' purchase of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. (PGP) last December. PGP makes public-key encryption software for mail and file encryption.

"This makes us the largest security software company in the industry," said Network Associates CEO Bill Larson. Network Associates was created last year through the merger between Network General, Inc., maker of the NetTools network management system and the Sniffer packet-analysis tool, and antivirus software de-veloper McAfee Associates, Inc. Network Associates last week shipped its latest security product, CyberCop, which can report and automatically take steps against suspicious network activity.

Impressive arsenal

Although Network Associates now boasts an impressive arsenal of security products, the challenge is to make them all work together. "We're going to be integrating all these products into NetTools," Larson said. This will allow for the management of antivirus software distribution, firewall configuration, systems monitoring and e-mail security-policy enforcement from one security console based on NetTools.

However, neatly reconciling the differing security philosophies espoused by TIS President and CEO Steve Walker and Phil Zimmerman, PGP's founder and now senior fellow at Network Associates, may be tougher.

Walker, a National Security Agency veteran and a pioneer in the commercial firewall market, is an outspoken advocate of encryption key-recovery technology that lets the government decrypt a user's scrambled data with a master key. TIS has developed the only commercial key-recovery technology approved by the government.

In contrast, Zimmerman won fame during the past five years for his fight against government control of encryption, and he recently told Network World he hoped PGP would never use government-approved key recovery.

But just last week, Network Associates President Les Denend said it is possible the company will develop a version of PGP that uses TIS' RecoverKey technology. "It's not Phil Zimmerman's decision, it's the user's," Denend said.