Last Updated on 08/03/2022 by Nidhi Khandelwal
The two technology companies announced Tuesday that Google has agreed to buy cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion in an all-cash deal.
After the acquisition is completed later this year, Mandiant is likely to be merged into Google Cloud, adding to the latter’s growing portfolio of security products, which includes BeyondCorp Enterprise, VirusTotal, and Chronicle.
“Today, enterprises face cybersecurity problems that are increasing in frequency, severity, and variety, resulting in a global security imperative,” Google stated in a statement.
“To address these threats, businesses must be able to quickly detect and respond to adversaries; analyze and automate threat intelligence to scale threat detection across organizations; orchestrate and automate remediation; validate their protection against known threats; and visualize their IT environment to identify and simulate new threats,” according to the report.
When FireEye, which had purchased Mandiant in 2013, sold its products business and the FireEye name to a consortium led by private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion in June 2021, Mandiant became a solo enterprise again.
Symphony, which also bought McAfee Enterprise for $4 billion in March 2021, merged the two companies earlier this year to form Trellix.
The cybersecurity firm is best known for discovering and proving SolarWinds’ supply chain intrusion, a severe cyber assault that impacted thousands of its downstream customers and went undiscovered for months until December 2020.
“The acquisition will complement Google Cloud’s existing security strengths,” Mandiant said, adding that the partnership will “deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities as well as advisory services helping customers address critical security challenges and stay protected at every stage of the security lifecycle.”