13 November 2009 - Success of the capital increase, Finalisation of the acquisition of SkyRecon Systems

ARKOON Network Security announces the success of the reserved capital increase which took place between 30th October to 9th October.

This capital increase allows ARKOON Network Security to acquire 100% of SkyRecon Systems shares, a company specialising in Intelligent Endpoint Security.

This acquisition amounts to €2,495,705 for the basic price which could be completed by a sum ranging from 0 to €2,218,404 to be determined in 2010 depending on both companies’ turnover levels in FY 2009.

Success of the reserved capital increase

The Board, meeting on 10th November 2009, observed that the company’s capital stock rose from €4,714,110 to €5,491,228 by the creation and issue of 777,118 new shares with a face value of €1 with an issue premium of €1,554,236, i.e. a unit share price of €3.

For this operation, the financial investment company, VENTECH takes a 9% stake in ARKOON’s capital.

Appointment of Ventech as a new member of the Supervisory Board

In compliance with the decision taken by the Mixed General Meeting dated 30th October 2009, the VENTECH company is appointed as new member of the ARKOON Network Security Supervisory Board for a period of six years. VENTECH will be represented on the board by Ms Claire Houry.

Thierry ROUQUET, Chairman of the Board, declared: “We are happy to welcome the Ventech company as one of our reference shareholders and are convinced that our different experiences will allow us to steer through other projects. We are particularly satisfied to welcome SkyRecon Systems within our Group. ARKOON Network Security thus secures the means to assert its position as a major player in endpoint security solutions: network, communication, data and workstation protection” .

20 October 2009 - Commtouch Weighs in on Industry-wide Phishing Debate

For the second quarter in a row, there were spikes in email-borne viruses not caught by major antivirus engines, differentiating these last two quarters from rather consistently low numbers seen during the previous 18 months.

Q3 2009 Highlights:

• Email-borne malware that bypassed traditional anti-virus engines peaked
  every 11 to 13 days during the second half of the quarter, dominated by Mal-Bredo A and Mal
  Behav-340, of which over 10,000 distinct variants were distributed.
• An average of 332,000 zombies were newly activated each day for the purpose of malicious activity.
• Spam levels averaged 83% of all email traffic throughout the quarter,peaking at 97% in July and bottoming out at 71% in August.
• Sites in the "Health & Medicine" and "Sex Education" categories topped the list of Web categories
  manipulated by phishing schemes.
• "Business" continued to be the Web site category most infected with malware.
• The financial crises and the debate around health care reform in the US has shaped recent spam trends.

Find whole Commtouch report on the Arkoon Security Center.

25 September 2009 - ARKOON announces a takeover deal for SkyRecon Systems

Lyon, September 21, 2009 - ARKOON announces today that an agreement has been signed with a view to acquiring the company SkyRecon Systems, a software publisher specialized in Intelligent Endpoint Security.


SkyRecon’s StormShield technology, directly integrated in the endpoint operating system, offers a radically new approach to protect organizations using a single-client to mitigate all endpoint-related risks: software vulnerabilities, theft or loss of critical data, inappropriate use of personal applications,unauthorized connectivity, software attacks and intrusions, internal breaches.

From its inception, the SkyRecon offer was designed in an integrated manner to streamline the choice,deployment and administration of functionalities required for endpoint protection: anti-malware and anti-intrusion protection, anti-virus and anti-spyware, control of removable devices, data encryption, application control, wireless security and network access control.

In 2008, SkyRecon Systems generated a turnover of approximately €2m and employs a 27-strong workforce to date.

With this acquisition, following the MSI takeover in 2006, ARKOON Network Security endows itself with the means to consolidate its position as a major player on the security solutions market: network,communication, data and endpoint protection. It will also strengthen its foothold in the mid-market and key account customer segments through its network of partners.

The details of this acquisition will be published once this transaction has been finalized, an event scheduled for the end of October 2009.

23 July 2009 - New Trojan Variants Stump Most Major AV Engines

• Spammers and malware distributers used current events including the Swine Flu epidemic and death of Michael Jackson to spread their messages.
• Sites in the “Health” and “Web-based email” categories topped the list of Web categories manipulated by phishing schemes.
• “Business” was the Web site category most infected with malware.
• An average of 376,000 zombies were newly activated each day for the purpose of malicious activity.
• Image-based spam returned with new tactics foregoing MIME-format standards to bypass some anti-spam engines.
• Spam levels averaged 80% of all email traffic throughout the quarter, peaking at 97% in April and bottoming out at 64% in June.
• Brazil continues to produce the most zombies, responsible for 17.5% of global zombie activity.

16 July 2009 - Activity – 1st half 2009

In an extremely difficult economic environment marked by a reduction in IT investment, the turnover of ARKOON Network Security decreased to €4,829K.
This change can be explained by two main factors:

• Activity outside France fell sharply from €527K as of 30 June 2008 to €107K as of 30 June 2009;
  Italian and Spanish markets being particularly affected by the crisis.
• Network Security sales (UTM appliances and security services) amounting to €3,302K (vs.
  €4,016K as of 30 June 2008) has been more severely affected by the current economic situation
  than Data Security (Security BOX) sales which stood up well at a figure of €1,526K, showing
  slight growth (+ 0.4%).

Over the period, Network Security accounted for 68% of total sales and Data Security for 32%.
Professional Services stood up well reaching a figure of €470K.

It should be noted that the Company made its first "Touch & Go" OEM sales which amounted to €116K
for the period.

Increase in recurring revenue

Deferred revenue (unearned revenue) was up slightly at €4,196K vs. €4,142K as of 31 December last.
Sales linked to maintenance contracts and subscriptions continued to perform well reaching €2,723K vs €2,518K as of 30 June 2008, a rise of 8.1%. This recurring revenue linked to the excellent renewal rate
for maintenance contracts, achieved to the detriment of equipment renewals (economic climate effect),has set part of the sales figure on a secure footing.

A very sound balance sheet with financing capability preserved

In this difficult climate, ARKOON Network Security has endeavoured to preserve its financial balance.
The financial structure of ARKOON Network Security as of 30 June 2009 was sound, with capital in the
region of €12M, available cash of €6M and financial debt amounting to less than 4% of its capital.

Continued conservative strategy and confidence in the future

To get through the current period and reinforce its position among the principal IT security publishers,
ARKOON Network Security is placing emphasis on its technological and commercial performance. As a
result, significant progress was made during the first half of the year:

• Version 2.2 of Security BOX Mobile, a communicating Smartphone and PDA security package,
  was successfully launched last March.
• The Appliances Network Processor (ANP) range was expanded to include a Small-250 version
  directed towards the small & medium business segment.
• A new distribution agreement was signed with D2B Informatique. This agreement comes in
  addition to those already concluded with a dense network of security expert partners.
• ARKOON Network Security and SOPHOS have joined forces to undertake a "Tour de France" to
  meet with their retailer and integrator partners.

And, to coordinate and maintain local relations with the network of partners (distributors, retailers
and operators, etc.), three new sales representatives have been recruited for the South, Rhône-
Alpes and Ile-de-France/North regions. During July, ARKOON Network Security will also be
taking on two other sales staff who will be directly in charge of major account customers with a
strong focus on the Security BOX offering.

With its sound fundamentals and robust financial structure, ARKOON Network Security is still on the
lookout for acquisition opportunities that would enable it to reinforce its offering and acquire new
technology.
2009 half-yearly results will be published on 15 September 2009 after close of trading.

11 May 2009 - Arkoon launches Small-250

ARKOON completes its range of Network Processor Appliances (NPA) with the launch of the Small-250, adding to its range of Small and Medium Business (SMB) products.

With this new appliance, Arkoon meets the security, integration, and performance requirements of small and medium businesses, whilst also providing an efficient solution to meet the requirements of the remote sites of large businesses.

Following in the example of other NPA range products, the Small-250 comprises a Cavium Octeon multicore processor, designed for network use. This architecture enables the Small-250 to reach a application FAST and VPN speed of over 100 Mbps (250 Mbps in Firewall mode), guaranteed to meet the requirements of SMBs with up to 100 users.

With 3 GB interfaces and a Fast-Ethernet port, the Small-250 can integrate into the most exacting architectures (redundancy of Wan links, multiple DMZ, Clusters) thereby guaranteeing an optimal level of security and availability.

Fitted with a high-capacity (32 GB) Solid-State Drive (SSD) flash technology disk, the Small-250 has a particularly high MTBF, whilst optimizing the functionalities related to the processing of local data.

With a recommended general public retail price of less than €2000 (ex VAT), the Small-250 will be available from 15 May 2009. Its price/performance/quality ratio is amongst the best on the market, and this new product will enable Arkoon Network security to reinforce its position as a leading provider of security services and solutions for Enterprises and Management Security Services Providers (MSSP).

20 April 2009 - Q1 2009 Internet Threats Trend Report by commtouch