Mandiant

Last updated

Mandiant, Inc.
FormerlyRed Cliff Consulting (2004–2006)
Type Subsidiary
Industry Information security
Founded2004;19 years ago (2004)
FounderKevin Mandia
Headquarters Reston, Virginia, U.S.
Key people
Kevin Mandia, CEO
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$483 million (2021)
Number of employees
2,335 (December 2021)
Parent
Website mandiant.com
Footnotes /references
[1]

Mandiant is an American cybersecurity firm and a subsidiary of Google. It rose to prominence in February 2013 when it released a report directly implicating China in cyber espionage. In December 2013, Mandiant was acquired by FireEye for $1 billion, who eventually sold the FireEye product line, name, and its employees to Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion in June 2021.

Contents

In March 2022, Google announced that it would acquire the company for $5.4 billion and integrate it into its Google Cloud division, with the firm becoming fully incorporated in September 2022.

Founding

Kevin Mandia, a former United States Air Force officer who serves as the company's chief executive officer, founded Mandiant as Red Cliff Consulting in 2004 before rebranding to its current name in 2006. [2] In 2011, Mandiant received funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and One Equity Partners to expand its staff and grow its business-to-business operations, providing incident response and general security consulting along with incident management products to major global organizations, governments, and Fortune 100 companies. [3] [ additional citation(s) needed ]

History

Mandiant is the creator of OpenIOC (Open Indicators of Compromise), an extensible XML schema for the description of technical characteristics that identify threats, security hackers' methodologies, and evidence of compromise. In 2012, its revenues were over $100 million, up 76% from 2011. [4]

In February 2013, Mandiant released a report documenting evidence of cyber attacks by the People's Liberation Army, [5] specifically Pudong-based PLA Unit 61398, [6] targeting at least 141 organizations in the United States and other English-speaking countries extending as far back as 2006. [7] In the report, Mandiant referred to the espionage unit as "APT1". [8]

In December 2013, Mandiant was acquired by FireEye for $1 billion. [9] [10] In October 2020, the company announced Mandiant Advantage, a subscription-based SaaS platform designed to augment and automate security response teams which combined the threat intelligence gathered by Mandiant and data from cyber incident response engagements; [11] in December, the company investigated a major supply chain attack by SolarWinds on U.S. government infrastructure. [12] [13] [14]

In May 2021, Mandiant was contracted to assist in the response to a ransomware incident impacting Colonial Pipeline, a fuel pipeline operator that supplies close to half of the gasoline, diesel, and other fuels to the East Coast of the U.S. [15] [16] In June, the company was spun off FireEye as part of the latter's acquisition by Symphony Technology Group. [17] [18] In August, the company acquired Intrigue, which specialized in surface management. [19]

In 2022, Axios reported that Mandiant reporters identified a pro-China disinformation campaign targeting American voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. [20]

Acquisition by Google

In March 2022, it was announced that the company would be acquired by Google for $5.4 billion and subsequently integrated into the Google Cloud division. [21] Following the announcement, Fortune reported that while the deal could face antitrust scrutiny, the acquisition "could help increase competition" rather than harm it. [22]

In April 2022, it was reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division was probing the deal for potential violations of federal antitrust law. [23] However, Mandiant revealed in July 2022 that the DOJ granted the acquisition approval. [24] Following a review over potential competition concerns, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced it would not oppose the deal. [25]

On September 12, 2022, the deal closed and integration between Mandiant and Google Cloud began. Following the acquisition, Mandiant was allowed to maintain its brand as a subsidiary of Google Cloud. [26] [27]

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References

  1. ↑ "Mandiant Inc 2021 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. March 1, 2022.
  2. ↑ "MANDIANT, A New Name for a Fast Growing Company; Red Cliff Consulting LLC Rebrands as Firm Offers Expanded Services, Education and Software Tools". Business Wire . February 14, 2006. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  3. ↑ Overly, Steven (February 17, 2013). "Mandiant in the spotlight as cyber attacks on companies increase" . The Washington Post . Archived from the original on February 18, 2013.
  4. ↑ Brad Stone and Michael Riley (February 7, 2013). "Mandiant, the Go-To Security Firm for Cyber-Espionage Attacks" . Bloomberg Business . Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  5. ↑ Harris, Paul (February 23, 2013). "Chinese army hackers are the tip of the cyberwarfare iceberg". The Guardian . Archived from the original on August 22, 2022.
  6. ↑ Xu, Weiwei (February 20, 2013). "China denies hacking claims". Morning Whistle. Archived from the original on June 29, 2013. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  7. ↑ Sanger, David E.; Barboza, David; Perlroth, Nicole (February 18, 2013). "Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S." . The New York Times . Archived from the original on February 19, 2013. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  8. ↑ Wan, Ellen; Nakashima (February 19, 2013). "Report ties cyberattacks on U.S. computers to Chinese military" . The Washington Post . Archived from the original on February 19, 2013. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
  9. ↑ Perlroth, Nicole; Sanger, David (January 2, 2014). "FireEye Computer Security Firm Acquires Mandiant" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on January 4, 2014. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  10. ↑ "FireEye acquires Mandiant in $1bn deal". BBC News . January 3, 2014. Archived from the original on July 7, 2022.
  11. ↑ Osborne, Charlie (October 6, 2020). "FireEye's Mandiant debuts new SaaS threat intelligence suite". ZDNet . Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
  12. ↑ Volz, Dustin (December 13, 2020). "U.S. Agencies Hacked in Foreign Cyber Espionage Campaign Linked to Russia" . The Wall Street Journal .
  13. ↑ Turton, William; Mehrotra, Kartikay (December 14, 2020). "FireEye Discovered SolarWinds Breach While Probing Own Hack" . Bloomberg News . Archived from the original on December 16, 2020.
  14. ↑ McLaughlin, Jenna (December 13, 2021). "The state of U.S. cybersecurity a year after the SolarWinds hack". NPR .
  15. ↑ Turton, William; Mehrotra, Kartikay (June 4, 2021). "Hackers Breached Colonial Pipeline Using Compromised Password" . Bloomberg Business . Archived from the original on June 4, 2021. Retrieved June 5, 2021.
  16. ↑ Nakashima, Ellen; Torbati, Yeganeh; Englund, Will (May 8, 2021). "Ransomware attack leads to shutdown of major U.S. pipeline system" . The Washington Post . Archived from the original on May 8, 2021. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
  17. ↑ Sigalos, MacKenzie (June 2, 2021). "FireEye is selling its products business and name for $1.2 billion". CNBC .
  18. ↑ Duckett, Chris (January 18, 2022). "McAfee Enterprise and FireEye are now called Trellix". ZDNet . Archived from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2022.
  19. ↑ Alspach, Kyle (August 10, 2021). "Mandiant's Advantage Platform To Get A Boost With Intrigue Acquisition". CRN . Archived from the original on August 10, 2021.
  20. ↑ Sabin, Sam (October 26, 2022). "Researchers uncover new pro-China disinformation campaign targeting U.S. voters". Axios. Retrieved October 28, 2022.
  21. ↑ Shead, Sam (March 8, 2022). "Google to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion". CNBC . Archived from the original on March 8, 2022. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
  22. ↑ "Can antitrust regulators justify killing a Google-Mandiant deal?". Fortune. Retrieved October 28, 2022.
  23. ↑ Burt, Jeff. "US DOJ probes Google's $5.4b Mandiant acquisition". www.theregister.com. Retrieved October 28, 2022.
  24. ↑ Fitzgerald, Jay (July 18, 2022). "Google-Mandiant Deal Closer After DOJ Ends Antitrust Inquiry". CRN. Retrieved October 28, 2022.
  25. ↑ "Google's acquisition of Mandiant not opposed". The Bull. August 11, 2022. Retrieved October 28, 2022.
  26. ↑ Faife, Corin (September 12, 2022). "Google now owns the firm that found SolarWinds hack". The Verge . Archived from the original on September 12, 2022. Retrieved September 12, 2022.
  27. ↑ Sawers, Paul (September 12, 2022). "Google closes $5.4B Mandiant acquisition". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
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