Earlier this month, Secure Computing announced plans to acquire privately-held messaging security vendor CipherTrust for $273.6 million in cash and stock. The combined company will sell a range of enterprise gateway security appliances designed to help companies handle threats at the network edge and at the application level. John McNulty, the CEO of Secure Computing, and Jay Chaudhry, founder and CEO of CipherTrust, spoke with Computerworld earlier this week about the deal.

Excerpts from that interview follow:

Why did Secure Computing buy CipherTrust?

McNulty: We just see a great opportunity to establish an enterprise gateway security company. There is no one in a leadership position here today. So this puts us in an ideal position to assume that leadership from the network edge to the desktop. We see a great fit both from the standpoint of the products and the technology. We see the financials are going to be great and we see a great fit for the [management] teams. It's really something that is a welcome relief. The senior team at Secure has been stretched as the company has grown. The last piece is the great opportunity we have in distribution. When we combine our customer base, we have over 18,000 customers in 100-plus countries and 1,700-plus channel partners. We are wildly enthusiastic about the potential this company has.

Chaudhry: One main point I'd like to add is if you look at the security space there are some 800 security start-ups. Most of them are doing point products and customers are getting tired of it. These companies bring a lot of innovation because of their focus. But they don't quite have the financial strength or scale to be viable players. CipherTrust and Secure Computing combined will keep the focus and innovation of a start-up, but our size and financial strength is that of a large company.

What exactly is an enterprise gateway security product?

Chaudhry: It provides protection across the network and application gateways, including unified threat management (tools) and firewalls, messaging security, Web security and identity management together with centralized policy and management

What is the size of the market opportunity?

Chaudhry: The area we are focused on is the appliance side. Messaging is about $2.6 billion. The appliance segment of that will be a little over a billion dollars. Similarly, each of the four areas [the combined company will focus on] is over a billion in the appliance segment alone. We can take a big part of it.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.