Google snaps up cybersecurity firm Mandiant for £4.1bn
Alphabet’s Google has snapped up cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4bn (£4.1bn) in cash as the company expands its thriving cloud business.
Google’s offer of $23 per share is at a premium of about 53 per cent to Mandiant’s stock price before a report that said Microsoft was eyeing a deal to buy the company, Reuters reported this morning.
It comes as Google continues to grow and expand its business, generating more than $19bn annually, with the cloud business particularly thriving.
Mandiant is a publicly traded US firm, which focuses on cyber-incident response and cybersecurity testing.
It became widely known in February 2013 when it released a report directly implicating China in cyber espionage.
The deal comes at time where the cybersecurity threats across the world are particularly prominent, and allow Google to build a competitive edge against tech rivals like Microsoft.
Forrester VP Principal Analyst Jeff Pollard commented on the move: “After divorcing FireEye, Mandiant spent very little time being single as suitors lined up. Rumors swirled that Microsoft was the destination, but Google came in and outbid Microsoft for the firm. GCP is playing catchup to Microsoft in cybersecurity and lacks its competitors’ inherent advantages in the enterprise: endpoint and active directory. That forces it to pay a premium and be more aggressive, which it has signalled a willingness to do.”
“This acquisition adds strong services to GCP’s portfolio and immediately adds expertise to Google Cybersecurity Action Team. Mandiant found a matchup with deep pockets as it reinvents itself. But significant gaps remain for the combined entity. Perhaps the most critical of those gaps is on the enterprise endpoint. GCP relies on EDR to complete its XDR offering, so we expect an EDR tool is next on its shopping list.”