Omdia believes rebranding from FireEye will prove to be a "costly mistake."

Edward Gately, Senior News Editor

January 20, 2022

7 Slides

McAfee Enterprise and FireEye have emerged as a new company under the name Trellix. The company focuses on extended detection and response (XDR).

Trellix is the latest Symphony Technology Group (STG) entity. It stems from the previously announced merger of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye in October. STG acquired both companies last year.

Eric Parizo is principal analyst of Omdia’s cybersecurity operations intelligence service. (Omdia and Channel Futures share a parent company, Informa.) He said Omdia was first to predict the merger of McAfee and FireEye back in June of last year. The formal operating union between the two has been a long time coming.

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Omdia’s Eric Parizo

“Trellix instantly becomes a $2 billion cybersecurity industry titan, with products that span the network, endpoint, cloud, security operations, data security and other areas,” he said. “But it also faces many questions, particularly how two companies that were each sliding into industry irrelevancy can reinvent themselves together.”

STG should launch the McAfee Enterprise secure service edge (SSE) portfolio as a separate business later this quarter. That includes cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG) and zero trust network access (ZTNA).

Ditching FireEye Brand a ‘Costly Mistake’

Omdia believes the Trellix rebrand will prove to be a “costly mistake,” Parizo said. It was “idiotic” for CEO Bryan Palma to abandon the FireEye brand.

“FireEye is an established, respected brand that has enjoyed years of success,” he said. “The FireEye name alone can open doors. Trellix, however, as a brand is highly likely to face the same challenges as Forcepoint. The Trellix name has no clear connection to security. And it doesn’t help articulate what the company actually is or does.”

Here’s how STG describes the new name:

“The new name evokes the structure of a trellis, a strong and safe framework used to support the structured growth of climbing plants and trees. Together, Trellix will deliver its brand promise to build resilient and confident organizations through living security — security technology that learns and adapts to protect operations from the most advanced threat actors.”

Benefits of XDR

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Trellix’s Bryan Palma

Trellix’s XDR is designed to accelerate the effectiveness of security operations by providing customers with the capability to ingest more than 600 native and open security technologies. Therefore, analysts can save time and act decisively to remediate threats. ​

“As today’s organizations push to achieve digital transformation, a strong security foundation is required to ensure continued innovation, growth and resiliency,” Palma said. “Trellix’s XDR platform protects our customers as we bring security to life with automation, machine learning (ML), extensible architecture, and threat intelligence.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more on Trellix.

Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Edward Gately or connect with him on LinkedIn.

About the Author(s)

Edward Gately

Senior News Editor, Channel Futures

As news editor, Edward Gately covers cybersecurity, new channel programs and program changes, M&A and other IT channel trends. Prior to Informa, he spent 26 years as a newspaper journalist in Texas, Louisiana and Arizona.

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