Google Cloud acquiring Mandiant for $5.4 billion to bolster cybersecurity offerings 

As rumored yesterday, Google today announced that it’s acquiring cybersecurity firm Mandiant. This deal, if approved by regulators, will expand Google Cloud’s security offerings.

Google is purchasing Mandiant in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion, or $23 per share. As of yesterday, the firm had a $4.5 billion market capitalization. The deal is expected to close “later this year” subject to stockholder and regulatory approvals, with scrutiny likely.

Founded in 2004, Mandiant is best known for discovering the SolarWinds attack in late 2020, and will become part of Google Cloud to bolster the division’s cybersecurity services and ultimately revenue. Google’s existing offerings include Chronicle analytics, VirusTotal scanning and cataloging, and BeyondCorp Enterprise.

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.

Google specifically touts the addition of:

• 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.