History
BlackSpider was a start-up company founded in 2002 by John Cheney [1] in Reading, Berkshire, UK.
In January 2004 Casenove Private Equity invested £4.6m ($6.6m) in the business, [2] allowing the organisation to grow into the French and German markets.
In July 2006 SurfControl, a UK listed PLC, acquired BlackSpider for £19.5m in cash. [3]
At the point of acquisition BlackSpider had £4m in historic revenues, an operating loss of £3.1m and over 1,200 customers. [4]
In October 2007 Websense acquired SurfControl for approximately £204m. [5]
Following the acquisition of SurfControl by Websense, the original BlackSpider Management Team, including John Cheney, left to found Workbooks.com, a provider of web-based CRM software for small businesses. [6]
Cisco Systems, Inc.,, is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other high-technology services and products. Cisco specializes in specific tech markets, such as the Internet of things (IoT), domain security, videoconferencing, and energy management with leading products including Webex, OpenDNS, Jabber, Duo Security, and Jasper. Cisco is one of the largest technology companies in the world, ranking 82nd on the Fortune 100 with over $51 billion in revenue and nearly 83,300 employees.
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McAfee Corp., formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American global computer security software company headquartered in San Jose, California.
The Raytheon Company was a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007. Raytheon was the world's largest producer of guided missiles. In April 2020, the company merged with United Technologies Corporation to form Raytheon Technologies, which, since July 2023, is known as RTX Corporation.
BlackBerry Limited is a Canadian software company specializing in cybersecurity. Founded in 1984, it originally developed the BlackBerry brand of interactive pagers, smartphones and tablets. In 2016, it transitioned to a cybersecurity enterprise software and services company under CEO John S. Chen. Its products are used by various businesses, car manufacturers, and government agencies to prevent hacking and ransomware attacks. They include the BlackBerry Cylance, the QNX real-time operating system; BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and a Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) platform.
Synopsys, Inc. is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Synopsys supplies tools and services to the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design of integrated circuits, simulators for development, and debugging environments that assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems. As of 2023, the company is a component of both the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indices.
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacturing of low power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Headquartered in the Silicon Forest area of Hillsboro, Oregon, the company also has operations in San Jose, Calif., Shanghai, Manila, Penang, and Singapore. Lattice Semiconductor has more than 1000 employees and an annual revenue of more than $660 million as of 2022. The company was founded in 1983 and went public in 1989. It is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol LSCC.
BMC Software, Inc. is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting, and Enterprise Software company based in Houston, Texas.
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SurfControl Plc., was a British software company based in Cheshire, England. The company provided website filtering, e-mail filtering and desktop security software for both enterprise and home users.
Blue Coat Systems, Inc., was a company that provided hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management. In 2016, it was acquired by and folded into Symantec. In 2019 was, as part of Symantec Enterprise division, sold to Broadcom.
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SurfWatch, Inc. was a Los Altos, CA-based company which pioneered the first widely available filtering software that allowed users to block explicit content on the Internet. By disallowing computers from accessing specified sites and by screening for newsgroups likely to contain sexually explicit material, SurfWatch was able to aid parents, educators and employers in preventing access to offensive material from a specific computer. The Apple Macintosh version of SurfWatch 1.0 was developed starting in 1994, first shipped to the public in May 1995, and was followed by the Microsoft version in July of the same year.
Vista Equity Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. With over $100 billion in AUM, it is one of the largest private equity firms in the world. Vista has invested in hundreds of technology companies, including Citrix, SentinelOne, and Marketo.
John O’Farrell is an Irish venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, which he joined in June 2010 as its third general partner. He serves on the boards of PagerDuty, Slack, Factual, GoodData, Granular, IFTTT, ItsOn and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
Cyren Inc. was a cloud-based Internet security technology company that provided security services and threat intelligence to businesses. It offered a range of services including web security, DNS security, anti-spam solutions, phishing detection, ransomware protection, URL filtering, malware detection, and botnet attack prevention. Cyren also provided endpoint protection for mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) gateways. Major clients included Microsoft, Google, Check Point, Dell, T-Mobile, and Intel. The company announced its closure in February 2023.
Forcepoint is an American multinational corporation software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that develops computer security software and data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall and cross-domain solutions.
RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation, is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitalization, as well as one of the largest providers of intelligence services. RTX manufactures aircraft engines, avionics, aerostructures, cybersecurity solutions, guided missiles, air defense systems, satellites, and drones. The company is also a large military contractor, getting a significant portion of its revenue from the U.S. government.
