Internet giant, Google, has announced that it is making one of its biggest acquisitions. The Alphabet Inc. owned company announced earlier this week that it is acquiring cyber security firm, Mandiant, for around $5.4 billion.
With this acquisition, Google would be well positioned to strengthen its security architecture, improve its response to cyber threats, and boost the cloud computing arm of the company.
“The acquisition of Mandiant will complement Google Cloud’s existing strengths in 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,” Google and Mandiant said in a joint statement.
Although, Google has been making giant strides at its cloud computing business, it has still been trailing behind other tech giant companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
Google, however, is showing its gusto and determination to be a major competitor in cloud computing sector of the internet, and it is showing its will with this high-stake spending on Mandiant.
Speaking on the acquisition stride, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester, Jeff Pollard, explained that Google’s cloud business is “playing catch-up to Microsoft in cybersecurity,” adding that this has forced Google “to pay a premium, and be more aggressive.” With this acquisition, he said, Google has “signaled” it’s willing to do just that.
While Google is pressing forward with the accusation, other companies like Microsoft had been rumoured to have showed interest in acquiring Mandiant. Google, however, is expected to close the deal and finalize the acquisition by the end of the year.
Read also: Samsung suffers security breach; loses 200GB worth of data to hackers
About Mandiant
Mandiant was founded in 2004, by former United States Air Force officer, Kevin Mandia. It began operations as Red Cliff Consulting, before rebranding to it’s present name in 2006.
Mandiant rose to limelight in 2013 after publishing a report that indicted China in cyber espionage. It was acquired by FireEye in December 2013 for $1 billion. FireEye was later acquired by Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion.
Mandiant focuses on threat intelligence, incident response and cybersecurity testing. The company takes credit for uncovering the Solar Winds hack, a devastating breach that impacted a number of federal agencies, and private businesses.