News

Google Cloud Now Bolstered by Mandiant Security Services

• By Kurt Mackie
• 09/12/2022

Google announced on Monday that it has completed its acquisition of security solutions company Mandiant.

The acquisition was originally publicized back in March, and was estimated to be a $5.4 billion deal. The deal's terms weren't described in today's announcement, though.

Google is planning to keep the Mandiant name and combine its security solutions with Google Cloud security offerings, which provide "security telemetry across multicloud and on-premise environments."  

Google promised to "continue to share groundbreaking Mandiant threat research to help support organizations, even for those who don't run on Google Cloud."

The Mandiant addition will add a "team of security and intelligence individuals spread across 22 countries, who serve customers located in 80 countries," Google indicated. Mandiant is particularly well known for its security consultancy work after major breaches. Google didn't indicate whether the Mandiant consultancy would continue, but Kevin Mandia, the CEO namesake of the company, suggested that it would do so, in a blog post:

While we are now part of Google Cloud, Mandiant is not going away -- in fact, it's getting stronger. We will maintain our focus on knowing the most about threat actors and extend our reputation for delivering world-class threat intelligence, consulting services, and security solutions.

Mandiant's integration with Google Cloud will also help "automate security operations and validate security effectiveness," Mandia indicated. The automation will happen via a "security brain" that's being built. Validation will happen based on "how effective security controls are against adversary threats," Mandia noted.

Google called out two Mandiant products that are getting integrated into the Google Cloud portfolio. One is Mandiant's Attack Surface Management solution, which checks for vulnerabilities and risks in organizational assets. Another is the Mandiant Security Validation product, which performs continuous checks on organizational threat readiness in both cloud-based and premises-based environments.

The acquisition also will create some sort of comprehensive security solution for cloud and premises environments.

"With this acquisition, Google Cloud and Mandiant will deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments," a Mandiant announcement indicated.

The announcements didn't indicate how Mandiant might serve its existing customers. For instance, in addition to its consultancy services, Mandiant offers its Advantage XDR, an extended detection and response platform, which includes the Attack Surface Management module that Google is planning to incorporate into its solutions.

Mandiant is now settling down with one of the big three cloud services providers, which can leverage its security-breach forensics reputation. Mandiant had preserved in consultancy operations last year when it separated from FireEye, which happened after the Symphony Technology Group bought FireEye for about $1.2 billion.