Google to acquire cyber security leader Mandiant for $5.4 billion

Upon the close of the acquisition, Mandiant will join Google Cloud.

Google said it is beefing up its cloud infrastructure to change the security paradigm in a way that will help organisations address and protect themselves against entire classes of cyber threats, while also rapidly accelerating digital transformation.

“Today, organisations are facing cyber security challenges that have accelerated in frequency, severity and diversity, creating a global security imperative. To address these risks, enterprises need to be able to detect and respond to adversaries quickly; analyse and automate threat intelligence to scale threat detection across organisations; orchestrate and automate remediation; validate their protection against known threats; and visualise their IT environment in order to identify and simulate new threats,” the company stated in a release. 

The acquisition of Mandiant will complement Google Cloud’s existing strengths in security. Google Cloud offers customers a robust set of services, including pioneering capabilities such as BeyondCorp Enterprise for Zero Trust and VirusTotal for malicious content and software vulnerabilities; Chronicle’s planet-scale security analytics and automation coupled with services such as Security Command Center to help organisations detect and protect themselves from cyber threats; as well as expertise from Google Cloud’s Cybersecurity Action Team. 

With the addition of Mandiant, Google Cloud will enhance these offerings to deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments. 

Mandiant, a recognised leader in strategic security advisory and incident response services, works with some of the largest organisations in the world, and has gained real-time and in-depth threat intelligence on the frontlines of cyber security. Combined with Google Cloud’s cloud-native security offerings, the acquisition will help enterprises globally stay protected at every stage of the security lifecycle.

Mandiant has proven global expertise in providing comprehensive incident response, strategic readiness and technical assurance that helps customers mitigate threats and reduce business risk before, during and after an incident. 

“Organisations around the world are facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the sophistication and severity of attacks that were previously used to target major governments are now being used to target companies in every industry,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. “We look forward to welcoming Mandiant to Google Cloud to further enhance our security operations suite and advisory services, and help customers address their most important security challenges.”

“There has never been a more critical time in cybersecurity. Since our founding in 2004, Mandiant’s mission has been to combat cyber attacks and protect our customers from the latest threats,” said Kevin Mandia, CEO, Mandiant. “To that end, we are thrilled to be joining forces with Google Cloud. Together, we will deliver expertise and intelligence at scale, changing the security industry.”

As a pioneer in offering multicloud technology, Google Cloud’s security operations suite will continue to provide a central point of intelligence, analysis and operations across on-premise environments, Google Cloud and other cloud providers. In addition, Google Cloud is deeply committed to supporting the technology partners of both companies, including the endpoint ecosystem. This acquisition will enable system integrators, resellers and managed security service providers to offer broader solutions to customers.

The acquisition of Mandiant is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of Mandiant stockholder and regulatory approvals, and is expected to close later this year, according to a Mandiant press release.