SecurityPortal.com, the online security content aggregation site, has been put on ice by parent firm, AtomicTangerine.

The people behind the SecurityPortal Web site, which billed itself as the "focal point for security on the Net", claimed 250,000 information security professionals read the site each month. As well as acting as a news aggregator, the site contained 40,000 pages of security information, e-newsletters and specially focused digests.

The business plan behind the site was to sell services based on packages containing this content, as well as online advertising. But it proved more difficult than expected to make money selling these services and its parent company decided to shelve the idea, at least for now.

A spokeswoman for AtomicTangerine said development with of site has been abandoned as part of a restructuring of the parent company's business, which will focus on more profitable aspects of its business.

"SecurityPortal's high quality information delivery service was extremely well-respected in the industry, but with the business restructuring and downsizing, financially, it did not make sense for AtomicTangerine to maintain it as it was," said a spokeswoman, who added that the "best parts of the site" may be offered in different format later.

SecurityPortal was created as a spin-off of its AtomicTangerine's main business early last year, however it was brought back under the wing of Atomic Tangerine this May as part of its consultancy services. Now the idea has become another victim of the dotcom recession.

SecurityPortal employed 12 people, most of whom have lost their jobs. ®