Raytheon to Plow $1.7 Billion Into New Cyber Venture

Raytheon is betting it can leverage the cybersecurity skills it honed for the US military and intelligence agencies to sell to banks and retailers, investing almost $1.7 billion to establish a stand-alone business in an area where its defense peers have struggled to make money.

The company will buy control of Websense from private-equity firm Vista Partners LLC. Raytheon said Websense, which has 21,000 data-security clients, half of them overseas, will form the core of a new cyber joint venture with forecast sales of $500 million this year and margins of around 20%. Raytheon Chief Executive Tom Kennedy said the threat of cyberattacks is increasing as cloud computing and mobile services make companies more vulnerable to costly electronic intrusions by state-sponsored hackers, terrorists, organized crime or insiders.