By Doug Cameron
October 2, 2016
Defense companies have struggled to parlay the cybersecurity expertise they’ve gained from working for the Pentagon into commercial data-protection products for banks and retailers facing increasingly sophisticated hacks.
Tom Kennedy, chief executive of Raytheon Co., believes his company is different.
Raytheon, the maker of the Tomahawk cruise missile, last year capped a series of acquisitions in the commercial cybersecurity business with the $1.7 billion purchase of a controlling stake in Websense Inc., forming a new Raytheon unit called Forcepoint.
Forcepoint is seeking to secure a foothold in a highly fragmented and intensely competitive industry at a time when cyberthreats involve highly publicized external attacks and just-as-damaging internal ones.