Google announced plans to buy cybersecurity company Mandiant for USD 5.4 billion, to strengthen its cloud consumer protection.
If the acquisition is approved by regulators, it will be Google's second largest acquisition after they bought Motorola Mobility worth USD 12.5 billion in 2012, which was later sold again to Lenovo worth USD 2.9 billion.
Google's third largest acquisition was Nest, a maker of smart home products, which it acquired worth USD 3.2 billion in 2014. In the Mandiant acquisition, Google paid USD 23 for each share of Mandiant shares sold publicly.
Mandiant, which was founded in 2004, will join Google's cloud computing division, we were quoted as saying by CNBC, Thursday (10/3/2022).
"Organizations around the world face unexpected cybersecurity challenges because of the sophistication and danger of attacks that previously threatened government agencies are now being used to attack companies in a variety of industries," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
"We look forward to welcoming Mandiant to Google Cloud to improve the security of our operating systems and services, to help consumers fix their most important security challenges," added Kurian.
Since the news of the acquisition, Mandiant shares rose 16% on Monday (7/3/2022). Bath's current value is USD 5.25 billion. Mandiant was previously under the auspices of FireEye, until later sold.
The acquisition of Mandiant is said to trigger Google Cloud rivals such as Microsoft and Amazon to increase the security of their growing business.
The work trend that began to shift to remote work and also the Russian invasion of Ukraine increased the number of cyber attacks and made the number of software security requests increase.