Mandiant, Inc. (NASDAQ: MNDT) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google LLC for $23.00 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion, inclusive of Mandiant’s net cash. The offer price represents a 57% premium to the undisturbed 10-day trailing volume-weighted average price as of February 7, 2022, the last full trading day prior to published market speculation regarding a potential sale of the Company. Upon the close of the acquisition, Mandiant will join Google Cloud.
Mandiant is a publicly-traded American cybersecurity firm. It rose to prominence in February 2013 when it released a report directly implicating China in cyber espionage. On December 30, 2013, Mandiant was acquired by FireEye in a stock and cash deal worth in excess of $1 billion
It is believed that the acquisition will complement Google Cloud’s existing strengths in security. Together with Mandiant, Google Cloud is believed to 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.
Cyber security is a mission, and we believe it’s one of the most important of our generation. Google Cloud shares our mission-driven culture to bring security to every organization. Together, we will deliver our expertise and intelligence at scale via the Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform, as part of the Google Cloud security portfolio. These efforts will help organizations to effectively, efficiently and continuously manage and configure their complex mix of security products.
Kevin Mandia, CEO, Mandiant
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 a 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 earlier this year.
The cybersecurity firm is best known for uncovering and investigating the supply chain compromise of SolarWinds, a devastating cyber attack that affected thousands of its downstream customers and went unnoticed for months until its discovery in December 2020.
In a statement released by google it said:
As a recognized leader in a strategic security advisory and incident response services, Mandiant brings real-time and in-depth threat intelligence gained on the frontlines of cybersecurity with the largest organizations in the world. Combined with Google Cloud’s cloud-native security offerings, the acquisition will help enterprises globally stay protected at every stage of the security lifecycle:
Advisory Services: Mandiant’s proven global expertise in providing comprehensive incident response, strategic readiness and technical assurance helps customers mitigate threats and reduce business risk before, during and after an incident.
Threat Detection and Intelligence: Mandiant’s experience detecting and responding to advanced adversaries offers customers actionable insights into the threats that matter right now.
Automation and Response Tools: Security operations tools within Google Cloud’s Chronicle, Siemplify solutions and Mandiant’s Automated Defense help customers analyze, prioritize and streamline threat response and leverage Mandiant’s expertise as a virtual extension of their teams.
Testing and Validation: Mandiant Security Validation helps customers continuously validate and measure the effectiveness of cybersecurity controls across cloud and on-premise environments, and complements Google Cloud’s Security Command Center to help ensure strong risk management.
Managed Defense: Mandiant’s managed detection and response service acts as a seamless extension of customers’ security teams, delivering continuous monitoring, event triage and threat hunting that’s agnostic to customers’ endpoint and network tooling.
In February 2022, the Cybersecurity Giant was eyed by Microsoft as well as stated in The Hindu.
About Google
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.
About Mandiant, Inc.
Since 2004, Mandiant® has been a trusted partner to security-conscious organizations. Effective security is based on the right combination of expertise, intelligence, and adaptive technology, and the Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform scales decades of frontline experience and industry-leading threat intelligence to deliver a range of dynamic cyber defense solutions. Mandiant’s approach helps organizations develop more effective and efficient cyber security programs and instills confidence in their readiness to defend against and respond to cyber threats.