Symantec to acquire security company Blue Coat for $4.65 billion

Security company Symantec has announced that it is acquiring the company Blue Coat for an amount of $ 4.65 billion, about 4.12 billion euros. Blue Coat’s current CEO, Greg Clark, will also become CEO of the combined company.

The companies expect the transaction to close in the third quarter of this year, Symantec said. With the merger, Symantec, now best known for its antivirus products, wants to expand its services. Blue Coat specializes in network security.

A group of investors acquired Blue Coat in 2011 for $1.3 billion. Before that, there had been a stir around the company, because its network filtering equipment was allegedly used to block websites in Syria, while a US embargo was in force against that country.

Symantec recently provided Blue Coat with an intermediate certificate, enabling the company to issue SSL certificates for domains itself. It was feared that Blue Coat could intercept and inspect secure internet traffic with this.

In a statement to The Register, both companies said the certificate had been issued “for testing purposes” and would no longer be in use. Blue Coat would never have had access to Symantec’s private key.