Google to acquire Mandiant in new deal worth $US5.4 billion

Google and Mandiant announced today that they have entered a deal for Google to acquire the dynamic cyber defence and response company.

The agreement is an all-cash transaction valued at approx. $US5.4 billion, inclusive of Mandiant's net cash, with shares sitting at US$23.00 each.

The acquisition will see Mandiant join Google Cloud to utilise its cyber security technology to assist companies in addressing and protecting themselves against entire classes of cyber threats while also rapidly accelerating digital transformation.

Google says the acquisition will complement Google Cloud's existing strengths in security which currently offers customers a robust set of services, including capabilities such as BeyondCorp Enterprise for Zero Trust and VirusTotal for malicious content and software vulnerabilities.

It also offers 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.

Google says the addition of Mandiant will mean Google Cloud can improve 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.

"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," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says.

"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."

Founded in 2004, Mandiant has partnered with a range of well-recognised security-conscious companies with its Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform, which the company says utilises decades of frontline experience and industry-leading threat intelligence to offer a range of dynamic cyber defence solutions to help organisations develop more effective and efficient cyber security programs.

Mandiant says of the acquisition that combining with Google Cloud's cloud-native security offerings will help businesses worldwide to stay protected at every stage of the security lifecycle.

"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," Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia says.

"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."

The key benefits of the acquisition are:

• Advisory Services: Mandiant's proven global expertise in providing a 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 analyse, prioritise 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.