[ISN] Security Start-Ups Catch Fancy of Investors

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/technology/computer-security-start-ups-catch-venture-capitalists-eyes.html

By NICOLE PERLROTH and EVELYN M. RUSLI
The New York Times
August 5, 2012

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- The question is no longer who have hackers hit. It 
is who has not been hit.

The organizations attacked by pranksters, criminal syndicates or foreign 
governments include Google, LinkedIn and the Central Intelligence 
Agency.

Big companies are expected to spend $32.8 billion on computer security 
this year, up 9 percent from last year. Small and medium-size businesses 
will spend more on security than on other information technology 
purchases in the next three years, according to the research firm 
International Data Corporation.

Yet here in Silicon Valley, with all the feverish talk of innovation and 
billion-dollar start-ups, few entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have 
been eager to take on the security juggernauts Symantec and McAfee -- 
and in many cases cybercriminals -- for a piece of that action.

That has started to change. In the last 12 months, the initial public 
offerings of once obscure security start-ups have outperformed offerings 
from household names like Facebook and Zynga. Imperva, a data security 
company that went public last year, finished 2011 among the year’s top 
offerings. Its shares jumped nearly 30 percent on their first day of 
trading, and remain 37 percent above the offering price. Zynga’s stock, 
by comparison, has plunged 73 percent since its offering last December.

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