So everyone knows at this point that AT&T has acquired VeriSign’s global security consulting business.  I’m not really sure why AT&T actually bought them although I’m sure that they have some sort of Grand Plan, much the same way that Verizon had when they acquired Cybertrust and all of the other companies that they bought over the years… 

What seems to really happen is that these large firms that don’t have a focus on security see an opportunity and spend a bunch of money to acquire well-known brands and, far more importantly, the teams of consultants and managers and the processes that have actually made the brand so well-known.  The problem is, the companies getting acquired aren’t really product companies - they are consulting firms.  Pretty soon the consultants and business managers start realizing that they are now an afterthought at an organization that doesn’t really know what the hell to do with them - so they start to leave. 

I haven’t been in the field as long as many and haven’t seen the various waves of acquisition that have occurred over the years in the security industry, but I have seen enough to believe that AT&T is going to mess up VeriSign.  They won’t be able to help themselves - they’ll turn the VeriSign consulting organization into an AT&T company - making them an add-on services offering and most of the decent people are going to get very quickly sick of their new-found position as a loss-leading line item in a huge telecommunications contract.

Maybe I’m wrong and, for the sake of those at VeriSign, I hope that I am, but I won’t be surprised if there are suddenly a lot of the better VeriSign people rapidly looking to make a change.