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posted by chromas on Friday November 16 2018, @03:24PM   Printer-friendly

BlackBerry to Acquire Cylance for $1.4 Billion in Cash:

BlackBerry on Friday announced that it has agreed to acquire next-generation endpoint security firm Cylance for US $1.4 billion in cash.

In addition to the cash payment, BlackBerry will assume unvested Cylance employee incentive awards.

The deal is expected to close before the end of BlackBerry's current fiscal year (February 2019), and Cylance will operate as a separate business unit within BlackBerry.

Cylance, which has raised nearly $300 million in funding, currently has more than 4,000 customers, including more than 20% of the Fortune 500. The company previously said that it had annual revenues over $130 million for fiscal year 2018, and over 90% year-over-year growth.

Cylance's flagship endpoint security product, CylancePROTECT, takes a mathematical and machine learning approach to identifying and containing zero day and advanced attacks. The company has been utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning as part of its core marketing message since the company was founded in 2012.

"We plan on immediately expanding the capabilities across BlackBerry's 'chip-to-edge' portfolio, including QNX, our safety-certified embedded OS that is deployed in more than 120 million vehicles, robot dogs, medical devices, and more," a BlackBerry company spokesperson told SecurityWeek. "Over time, we plan to integrate Cylance technology with our Spark platform, which is at the center of our strategy to ensure data flowing between endpoints (in a car, business, or smart city) is secured, private, and trusted."

Loved the keyboard on my now-long-since-dead BlackBerry Curve. Saw their struggles with bringing out an Android handset and am quite frankly very much surprised that they had this large of a war chest to invest in such an acquisition. Anybody here still using a BlackBerry? Which one?


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Friday November 16 2018, @11:26PM (1 child)

    by legont (4179) on Friday November 16 2018, @11:26PM (#762897)

    Many investors remain skeptical of BlackBerry and some may even doubt these end markets. But consider that 10 million new connected "Things" are activated each day. Or that "BlackBerry software powers 60% of connected cars on the road today and has the No. 1 market share in telematics and infotainment.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/blackberry-buys-cylance-for-14-billion-as-it-bolster-a-i-arsenal-14784468 [thestreet.com]

    QNX is what Linus should have worked on instead of cloning an amateur hack Unix is. QNX type of OS architecture is the future and whoever takes the lead will own the world in a decade or two.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @01:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @01:11AM (#762915)

    Which I will note had the same issues as QNX, what with neither being open source at the time, and in the case of Linux vs MINIX, being dog slow on the computer hardware of the era, an issue which linux sought to resolve by being monolithic instead of microkerneled?

    Now given all the other performance hits taken today due to speculative execution, microkernels might make sense as an alternative way to avoid the speculative/performance counter leaks, while also providing better memory protection between drivers and the core operating system.

    But that is all viewing in hindsight.