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 standalone business in an area where its defence peers have struggled to make money.

The company plans to announce Monday that it bought control of Websense from private equity firm Vista Partners. Raytheon said Austin, Texas-based 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%.