Posted on July 7th, 2010“We are very excited to become a part of Webroot.” – Quinn Curtis, president and CEO, BrightCloud
For about five years now, Brightcloud had been providing web security services to enterprise clients. It also provided services like on demand computing, online backup, network optimization, etc. Popular amongst its offerings were its web filtering and website reputation services.
“Webroot has a long and successful history of protecting organizations and end users worldwide from Web-based threats.” – Brian Burke, security program director, IDC
Webroot was founded in 1997 with a trace removal agent called Window Washer. Over the years it has focused on providing internet security services. It is currently best known for Spy Sweeper, an anti-spyware solution. It aims to strengthen its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings with the Brightcloud acquisition.
The acquisition
As far as acquisitions go, this seems to have been a pretty smooth one. There seem to have been no previous announcements by Webroot about its intentions. Brightcloud seems to be the perfect company to suit Webroot’s needs. It will help Webroot expand its current security offerings. It will also allow Webroot to move into the fields that Brightcloud was already operating in, such as web filtering and hosted services.
Apart from the technology, Webroot also benefits from Brightcloud’s brilliant engineers. No doubt it is going to have an enhanced task force once the shuffling is completed. That won’t require much time, however, considering Brightcloud’s small size. Its LinkedIn profile says it has only 12 employees, though we are suspicious of this claim.