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Comment by casca | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting purchase as Matasano is a services company that has some of the smartest people in infosec. For those not in the field, Thomas, Dave and Jeremy are well known and highly respected.

Many acquisitions are to get the talent but I can't remember another one where it's so apparent. The problem is that talent is mobile and $13m for a few super-smart people who leave after a year is expensive.

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There is no such thing as a non-talent acquisition in consulting. We're not going anywhere; like iSEC before us, we continue to run independently as Matasano.

So you're acquired in a "becomes a subsidiary" sense rather than "be assimilated in the borg" sense?

Yes. The parent comment illustrates exactly what happens when you try to Borg a high end consulting firm.

So have the acquired you solely for your (current & expected) revenue, or will you bring other wider benefits to the group? Will you just be producing profits for them, or are you planning any kind of inter-play with other group companies?

I'm not sure how to answer this but I am psyched to be able to talk to iSEC people more. :)

Thats a good, diplomatic answer :)

I love your verbing of "borg".

You will be Borged. Resistance is futile.

I've actually worked with iSEC people last year, and only realized they were part of NCC Group today. Totally independent shop.

Are you sure about that?

I used to work for a company NCC Group bought a few years ago and I heard Rob Cotton say the same thing...

Things got interesting really fast after our friends in Manchester bought us - changing what computers we use (on the desktop and server), changing email, etc, etc.

I'm one of the founders of iSEC (acquired by NCC in Oct 2010) and I can confirm that we've had a lot more freedom than anybody actually expected. There should be a lot more collaboration between iSEC and Matasano as Tom pointed out, but they don't have to fear the NCC borg assimilating them just yet.

From my understanding of the NGS buyout (which preceded the great NGS exodus) it was on different terms to the SecureTest buyout.

Also SecureTest and NGS were very different creatures. The phrase 'herding cats' was never so much an understatement as it was from what I've been told about life at NGS.

It's also a bit more difficult to bring that level of control into a company outside of the UK. I'm sure there'll be an eventual absorption into the NCC cube (more likely co-absorption of iSEC and Matasano into one entity if previous activities are considered) but I imagine there'll be a fair level of autonomy as long as the founders stick around.

Also I still chuckle about the SAP implementation. We offered to test it years back but for some reason NCC weren't up for it.

Yes, I am sure.

That's very nice. Congrats.

Two years at least:

> Consideration of £8.4m - initially £4.2m, then two further payments up to £4.2m in total over next 24 months against performance related targets

It was apparent with NGS too, who were (are) one of the most highly regarded pen testing companies here in the UK. Having worked with many of the leading ones I can say NGS was always at the top of the list, helped not only by their talent but also small size which made them flexible and adaptable. After the acquisition I noticed this changed and a number of the guys I'd worked with left. So it is probably good that Matasano is staying Matasano but with the ability to draw on the collective resources of all the other teams.

I wouldn't say that NGS were the most highly regarded by anyone but themselves. They had a lot of technical expertise in various areas but terrible account and product lifecycle management. Still, there were some extremely smart people there (and I'm sure there still are, you just don't hear from them as NGS).

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