Movers and Shakers

Google is buying cyber threat intelligence business Mandiant in a US$5.4 billion deal that will significantly upgrade Google’s existing cyberdefence offering. When the deal is done, Mandiant will bring its highly regarded cyber-threat intelligence and analysis products across to the Google Cloud platform.

Google says the purchase will build on Google Cloud’s existing security strengths. By tapping into Mandiant’s expertise, Google Cloud will boost its capabilities by delivering an end-to-end operations suite and offering better advisory services when customers deal with cyber-security challenges.

Darktrace is acquiring Cybersprint for €47.5 million (AU $74.3 million) to be paid approximately 75% in cash and 25% in equity, valuing the transaction at approximately 12.5 times Cybersprint’s annual recurring revenue (ARR). With an expected completion date of on or around 1 March 2022, Cybersprint’s results of operations are not expected to be material to Darktrace’s results for the remainder of FY 2022.

Through this acquisition, Darktrace gains a second European R&D Centre in The Hague, Netherlands, joining forces with Cambridge-based mathematicians and software engineers.

“We are very excited to welcome the Cybersprint team to Darktrace. Bringing insideout and outside-in visibility together is critical and having access to the robust, rich, real-time external dataset combined with Darktrace’s SelfLearning AI means that customers get a holistic view of prioritised cyber risks to harden the parts of their organisation that are most vulnerable. With this acquisition, we are able to leverage Cybersprint’s seven years of R&D to accelerate our Prevent product family, ultimately making it much harder for cyber-attackers to carry out successful missions,” said Poppy Gustafsson, CEO, Darktrace.

“I’m very excited about this fantastic step in the journey of Cybersprint. We are passionate about automating manual tasks in cybersecurity from an outside perspective. We believe attackers never sleep and operate without scope. When we began conversations with Darktrace, we felt an instant connection on vision, culture and technology. That’s why we are looking forward to joining Darktrace and working together to accelerate state-of-the-art innovations to make organisations more cyber secure,” commented Pieter Jansen, CEO, Cybersprint.

Cloudflare has announced it has agreed to acquire Area 1 Security.

“Email is the largest cyber attack vector on the Internet, which makes integrated email security critical to any true Zero Trust network. That’s why today we’re welcoming Area 1 Security to help make Cloudflare’s platform the clear leader in Zero Trust,” said Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare. “To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organisation’s applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email. Together, we expect we’ll be delivering the fastest, most effective, and most reliable email security on the market.”

“Data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center 2020 Internet Crime Report shows that malicious phishing campaigns including business email compromise are the most costly—with U.S. businesses losing more than $1.8 billion. Well known incidents of the last decade include the JPMorgan Chase breach, where a phishing attack impacted 76 million households and 7 million small businesses; SolarWinds, where phishing led to the compromise of 18,000 customers including multiple government agencies; Sony Pictures, where a phishing attack reportedly led to more than 100 terabytes of proprietary data being stolen; and in the U.S. elections, where phishing has been cited as the cause of damage inflicted upon the United States’ electoral process.”

According to Forrester, “the biggest problems with email are its ubiquity and our willingness to trust it. Every person has an email account, often more than one, making this medium a perennially ripe target for attackers.” As email continues to be an attractive entry point for increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, businesses of all sizes need to consider how to integrate email solutions into their overall security stack and bolster it with global threat intelligence.

Akamai Technologies has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode.

“The opportunity to combine Linode’s developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai’s market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai,” said Dr. Tom Leighton, chief executive officer and co-founder, Akamai Technologies. “Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge. This a big win for developers who will now be able to build the next generation of applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security.”

Christopher Aker, founder and chief executive officer, Linode, added, “We started Linode 19 years ago to make the power of the cloud easier and more accessible. Along the way, we built a cloud computing platform trusted by developers and businesses around the world. Today, those customers face new challenges as cloud services become all-encompassing, including compute, storage, security and delivery from core to edge. Solving those challenges requires tremendous integration and scale which Akamai and Linode plan to bring together under one roof. This marks an exciting new chapter for Linode and a major step forward for our current and future customers.”

Under terms of the agreement, Akamai has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding equity of Linode Limited Liability Company for approximately $900 million, after customary purchase price adjustments. As a result of structuring the transaction as an asset purchase, Akamai expects to achieve cash income tax savings over the next 15 years that have an

estimated net present value of approximately $120 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

For fiscal year 2022, the acquisition of Linode is anticipated to add approximately $100 million in revenue and be slightly accretive to non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.05 to $0.06.

PJT Partners served as financial advisor and WilmerHale served as legal counsel to Akamai. DH Capital served as financial advisor and Latham & Watkins served as legal counsel to Linode.

Cyble has raised a US $10M Series A financing round led by Blackbird, with continued participation from Spider Capital, January Capital, Cendana Capital, and VentureSouq. The funds will be allocated to expanding Cyble’s product roadmap, enabling deeper penetration into existing & new markets, and amplifying its Cyble Research Labs (CRL) capabilities.

Founded by Beenu Arora and Manish Chachada in 2019, Cyble continuously monitors the darkweb and surfaceweb data in real-time across open and closed sources to map, monitor, and mitigate companies’ digital risk footprint.

The news of Series A funding marks almost a year since Cyble’s initial Seed funding round. In April 2021, Cyble announced it raised $4M led by Blackbird and Spider Capital, with participation from Picus Capital and Cathexis Ventures. Since then, the company has built a solid foundation through sustainable growth, evolving its client offering with darkweb, brand, and attack surface monitoring, growing its client base across 6 countries and increasing its headcount from 25 to 80 people.

“Cyble began with an ambitious goal to democratize visibility into the darkweb and empower organizations to fortify their security infrastructure and consequently ensure resilience to malicious cyberattacks,” says Manish Chachada, co-founder and COO of Cyble. “We are incredibly excited to receive the support from our investors to continue to carry out Cyble’s vision, and honored that Cyble is recognized as a leading voice in cybersecurity and a trusted partner that enables businesses to advance their Digital Risk Protection Strategy.”

Minsoo Chi of Spider Capital noted: “We’ve been impressed with Beenu and Manish and the entire Cyble team on their execution towards providing organizations with real-time visibility into the darkweb. We are thrilled to continue to support them in their vision to democratize digital risk protection.”

Tom Humphrey of Blackbird noted: “In less than 12 months, the growth that Cyble has achieved is nothing short of stunning. Beenu, Manish and their team have already made significant progress on the product roadmap and global expansion, and it’s clear they’re just getting started. Cyble is solving a big, painful problem for businesses across the world and we are proud to continue supporting their ambition.”

Alongside its continual focus to minimize and manage cyber risk for its clients, Cyble recently introduced a Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) and defense threat intelligence tailored solution, Cyble Hawk to aid law enforcement and government agencies in combating cyber risks that have national and geopolitical ramifications.

“The Series A funding round is a major milestone for our rapidly growing company, and affirmation of Cyble’s emergence as a pioneer and thought leader in the infosec industry. We are thrilled to receive this support and intend to direct these funds to drive our research, development, and intelligence capabilities to greater heights. It is no secret that cybercrime activity conducted in the darkweb is rising exponentially, we believe that continuous threat intelligence and darkweb monitoring are critical for organizations to identify and manage data breaches in a timely manner. Cyble is committed to deliver comprehensive cybersecurity solutions that resonate with our growing client base,” says

Securonix has announced it has received more than $1 billion growth investment led by Vista Equity Partners.

“Securonix is driven by technology innovation and a passionate mission to address the cybersecurity challenges faced by organizations globally. We solve a very tough problem that requires excellence across multiple domains, including product engineering, threat detection/hunting, data science, and operations. This funding will help us accelerate investments in these areas and continue to provide a worldclass service to our customers,” said Sachin Nayyar, CEO and co-founder, Securonix.

“We pioneered User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) with an analytics-centric approach to security monitoring, extended to next-gen SIEM with a scalable cloud-native architecture, and introduced Open XDR and SOAR capabilities to deliver a true end-to-end security operations fabric for threat detection and response. Our goal is to extend this to the application layer and to OT and IoT. Vista’s proven track record of partnering with next-gen, hypergrowth SaaS companies will advance our mission and allow us to help our customers solve these problems.” Securonix offers the leading SaaS-based, multi-tenant security analytics, operations and response platform that provides complete visibility, advanced detection and response, and unlimited scalability.

“As a next-gen SaaS company with a strong leadership team, differentiated platform, and passionate customer base, Securonix is leading the SIEM and XDR markets at a time of significant transformation,” said Michael Fosnaugh, Co-Head of Vista’s Flagship Fund and Senior Managing Director. “It’s a privilege to partner with talented founders like Sachin and Tanuj, and we look forward to supporting the entire Securonix team to help advance their vision and set the standard for modern security analytics and operations.”

“Since inception, Securonix has been steadfast in its commitment to develop innovative products that solve the difficult problem of identifying and responding to advanced security threats while meeting the needs of scalability, cloud readiness, and operational efficiency,” said Tanuj Gulati, CTO and co-founder, Securonix. “We look forward to this partnership with Vista to support our goal of enabling leading enterprises and managed service providers to secure their infrastructure, network, and applications against advanced threats with speed and efficiency.”

“Securonix has established a mission-critical business that is uniquely qualified and well positioned to redefine the SIEM industry,” said Rod Aliabadi, Managing Director at Vista. “We are excited to partner with their exceptional team as they expand into new markets and continue to innovate with their products and solutions.” Citi is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Securonix, and Fenwick & West LLP is acting as legal counsel. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as legal counsel to Vista.