By Melanie Turek, Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research LLC
November 19, 2004

A recent investment by Symantec Corporation [NASDAQ: SYMC] in Secure Data in Motion (Sigaba) supports Nemertes’ belief that messaging security is about more than fighting viruses and spam. Symantec and private equity investment firm Liberty Partners have together invested $8 million in Sigaba, and Symantec will join the Sigaba board of directors.

The development demonstrates Symantec’s interest in expanding beyond its core anti-virus and anti-spam technologies to other forms of secure messaging. Sigaba’s e-mail and IM products offer extra messaging security, including authentication, encryption and digital signatures. The vendor also offers secure statements, so companies can embed documents in e-mail or IM while guaranteeing compliance with government and industry regulations. And Sigaba’s Express product family delivers secure communications solutions for government, military and public sector applications given their unique needs and technology architectures.

Additional players in this space include PostX (funded in part by Mayfield and Palo Alto Venture Partners), Sybari (funded in part by Summit Partners) and Postini (funded in part by AltoTech Ventures and August Capital). Companies that may be interested in investment opportunities include McAfee [NYSE: MFE] and Trend Micro [NASDAQ: TMIC].

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Chris Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com