Whither information security? Examining the complementarities and substitutive effects among IT and information security firms

Lara Khansa and Divakaran Liginlal

International Journal of Information Management, 2012, vol. 32, issue 3, 271-281

Abstract: The last few years have seen an increase in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity among information security firms and other information technology (IT) firms offering complementary technologies. Using social network analysis methods, we investigate the characteristics and underlying dynamics of these M&A activities in the United States (US) over the period 1996–2008. Our results reveal a 400% increase from 1996 to 2006 in the cohesiveness of the network linking the information security firms and IT firms considered in our analysis. This, in turn, implies a move towards industry convergence. In particular, we show that M&As involving identity and access management (IAM) firms have become twice more central to M&As by IT firms in 2003 (compared to 2002), reflecting an increasing trend among IT firms to integrate IAM technologies within their products. The results in this paper provide M&A managers of IT firms with strategic insights into which complementary information security firms ought to be acquired.

Keywords: Information security; Identity and access management; Industry convergence; Social network analysis; Complementarities; Mergers and acquisitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026840121100140X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:32:y:2012:i:3:p:271-281

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2011.11.015

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Management is currently edited by Yogesh K. Dwivedi

More articles in International Journal of Information Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().