NetSec scoops up Defcom

London-based security consultancy Defcom Information Security has been bought out of administration by US managed security services firm NetSec. Financial terms of the deal, announced today, were not disclosed.

The newly acquired business will operate under the name of NetSec, and continue to deliver professional security services (e.g. penetration testing) to its European customers. These includes FTSE 100 organisations in the financial, insurance, manufacturing and government markets. It will also offer NetSec's portfolio of vulnerability and event management services.

Other managed security services, most notably Counterpane, have launched European offices only to retrench to the States and rely more on channel partners this side of the Atlantic. NetSec reckons competitors' European expansion plans were premature,
but the time is now right for the market to expand in Europe.

Defcom was placed in administrative receivership earlier this month after its major financial backer, a private equity firm, declined to put more money into its business.

David Howarth, head of sales and business development at NetSec newly-established London offices and previously with Defcom, said that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with its business.

Defcom has been reselling NetSec's services for the last year nand this relationship paved the way for the deal. The founders of NetSec came out of the US intelligence agency community and there's a match in corporate cultures between it and Defcom, we're told.

Howarth was reluctant to discuss whether thee had been any redundancies due to Defcom's spell in administrative receivership. Informed sources tell us a number of pen testers and a sales exec have recently left the firm, however Howarth said that the "core team of the company remains intact".

NetSec UK will employ 14 people with as yet unnamed managing director due to come over from the States to run the firm's London operation shortly. ®

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