Google Buys Cybersecurity Firm Mandiant for $5.4 Billion

Google is officially buying cybersecurity company Mandiant in an
all-cash deal approximately valued at $5.4 billion, the two
technology firms announced Tuesday.

Mandiant is expected to be folded into Google Cloud upon the
closure of the acquisition, which is slated to happen later this
year, adding to the latter’s growing portfolio of security
offerings such as BeyondCorp Enterprise^[1], VirusTotal^[2], and Chronicle^[3].

“Today, organizations are facing cybersecurity challenges that
have accelerated in frequency, severity and diversity, creating a
global security imperative,” Google said^[4]
in a statement.

“To address these risks, enterprises need to be able to detect
and respond to adversaries quickly; 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 in order
to identify and simulate new threats.”

Mandiant became a standalone entity again in June 2021 when
FireEye, which acquired the company in 2013, sold its products
business and the FireEye brand for $1.2 billion to a consortium led
by private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group.

Symphony, which also acquired McAfee Enterprise for $4 billion
in March 2021, combined the two businesses to launch Trellix^[5]
earlier this year.

The cybersecurity firm is best known for uncovering and
investigating the supply chain compromise of SolarWinds, a devastating^[6]
cyber attack^[7]
that affected thousands of its downstream customers and went unnoticed for months^[8] until its discovery in
December 2020.

“The acquisition will complement Google Cloud’s existing
strengths in security,” Mandiant said^[9], stating the deal
“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.”