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Private equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) has been on a cybersecurity buying spree the last two years, acquiring RSA Security, McAfee’s enterprise business and Mandiant’s FireEye products business (see FireEye, Mandiant to Split in $1.2 Billion Deal).
Industry analysts have speculated that STG might merge at least some of its security holdings. Yesterday that picture became a little clearer when STG announced that after it closes the acquisition of FireEye Products – expected to occur next week when Mandiant Solutions completes the divestiture – McAfee Enterprise and FireEye Products will be combined.
2022 update: The McAfee-FireEye enterprise business has become Trellix, while McAfee’s cloud business has become Skyhigh Security.
FireEye’s Bryan Palma, formerly of BlackBerry and Cisco, will become CEO of the combined company, which will boast 40,000 customers, 5,000 employees, and nearly $2 billion in revenue. McAfee Enterprise CFO Ian Halifax will become CFO of the combined company.
STG co-founder and Managing Partner William Chisholm said in a statement, “Cyber risk is the number one threat facing modern organizations and we are excited to advance our growing portfolio of cybersecurity companies. Given Bryan and Ian’s respective experiences leading transformations, we are thrilled to partner with them to unlock value in the cybersecurity market.”
Said Palma, “Our customers need an integrated security platform powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation. We have an incredibly talented team of security professionals who will work tirelessly to deliver this outcome for our customers.”
Product Overlap
The new company’s integrated security portfolio will span endpoints, infrastructure, applications, and the cloud – but will also have a great deal of product overlap that will need to be sorted out. The two are top companies in core security markets like endpoint detection and response (EDR) and security information and event management (SIEM).
The name of the combined company hasn’t been announced either. There’s no easy division of names, as there was in the Symantec-Norton split, leading some to speculate that the FireEye name might be a good choice, as McAfee would otherwise share a name with its former consumer business.
RSA remains a separate company, but with STG’s goal of maximizing value, there could be more moving parts in the weeks and months ahead.
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