SourceFire goes ClamAV digging

This morning SourceFire announced its acquisition of ClamAV, an open source e-mail anti-virus gateway technology.

This is a safe move by SourceFire as it aligns well with their Snort experiences. Both Snort and AV will retain their open source GPL license heritage and will generate enterprise revenues with commercial licenses. As much as I want to snicker about AV being a commodity, it should produce tidy business returns for a few years. 

Still, the future of SourceFire is tied to their RNA technology. I would feel better if I could see a connection between an AV gateway and RNA that makes dynamic decisions based on endpoint and network intelligence. Organizations look to improve security operations in increasingly complex networks. ClamAV certainly does not go in that direction.

With proper execution SourceFire will make money on this deal, but it would be nicer if it brought something to customers that they can't already have. I give SourceFire credit for sticking to their roots and for acquiring a technology that will help the bottom line. That is an excellent consideration when you are a public company. I  hope their next acquisition is more strategic and does more to re-establish their position as network security innovators.