Understanding Resilient Systems: IBM’s Latest Acquisition in the Security Space

In our recent IBM series, we discussed how IBM (IBM) is continuing its acquisitions strategy in 2016 in and effort to boost further revenue growth. Resilient Systems is the most recent company that IBM has included in its acquisition portfolio. Resilient Systems, a heavy hitter in the cybersecurity space, is best known for its “incident response” platform. Although IBM has not divulged financial details about this acquisition, InformationWeek stated that IBM paid $100 million to get Resilient Systems under its acquisition portfolio.

Resilient Systems’ incident response platform technology helps clients respond to security breaches in a faster, more precise, and coordinated manner. The platform integrates or orchestrates response processes across functions like HR, finance, and security and across security systems that monitor data, networks applications, and end points to deal with the consequences of security incidents from breaches and lost devices.

IBM’s SIEM technology is based on QRadar Security Intelligence Platform, which when complemented with Resilient’s incident response platform will provide an integrated end-to-end security operation and Incident Response Platform solutions. FireEye’s (FEYE) Mandiant is a leading player in the incident-response services space.

According to Gartner, IBM stands tall among leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report for SIEM (security information and event management) in 2015. Splunk (SPLK) and Intel Security (INTC) are other players who made it into Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. Gartner is of the opinion that the SIEM cybersecurity space will continue to thrive primarily due to threat management.

Investors interested in gaining exposure to IBM can consider investing in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which has an exposure of 8.7% to application software and invests ~0.7% of its holdings in IBM.

Now let’s examine IBM’s X-Force Incident Response Services.