Veritas enters IAM fray with BeyondTrust buy

Contact: Scott Denne Garrett Bekker

Veritas Capital’s acquisition of BeyondTrust adds to a flurry of recent deals in the identity and access management (IAM) sector. The transactions continue to flow as CISOs become less reliant on perimeter defenses alone.

At $310m, Veritas is valuing BeyondTrust just a smidge over 3x trailing revenue, putting it below the multiple on Thoma Bravo’s purchase of SailPoint and above the 2.5x that Gemalto paid for SafeNet in its $890m acquisition of that company in August. Other recent deals in this sector include RSA’s pickup of Symplified’s assets and a pair of IAM purchases this summer by IBM.

In a December 2013 survey by TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research, IAM was the most cited security-related spending priority for IT shops over the next 12 months. Given the increasing role of identity as a key security construct in both cloud and mobile computing architectures, we expect that identity-related technologies will remain fodder for future dealmaking.

Recent IAM transactions

Date announced Acquirer Target Deal value
September 3, 2014 Veritas Capital BeyondTrust Software $310m
August 12, 2014 Thoma Bravo SailPoint Technologies Click for estimate
August 11, 2014 IBM Lighthouse Security Group Not disclosed
August 8, 2014 Gemalto SafeNet $890m
July 31, 2014 IBM CrossIdeas Not disclosed

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

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