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FireEye sells product division to private equity firm Symphony for $1.2B

Follow's Symphony's acquisition of McAfee

Cyber security vendor FireEye is to sell its products unit to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) for US$1.2 billion. 

The all-cash deal allows STG to utilise the FireEye brand as it takes ownership of the vendor’s network, email, endpoint and cloud security products, along with the related management and orchestration platform. 

The sale marks FireEye’s separation from its digital forensics and incident response arm Mandiant. According to the vendor, the separation will give FireEye strengthened channel relationships with managed security services providers based on integration alliances with complementary cyber security product vendors. 

“We believe this separation will unlock our high-growth Mandiant Solutions business and allow both organisations to better serve customers,” said FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia. 

“After closing, we will be able to concentrate exclusively on scaling our intelligence and frontline expertise through the Mandiant Advantage platform, while the FireEye Products business will be able to prioritise investment on its cloud-first security product portfolio.” 

Mandia and Mandiant joined the FireEye family 2014 via the former’s US$106.5 million acquisition. According to Mandia, STG is an “ideal partner” for FireEye due to its focus on cyber security and software. 

The company most recently bought McAfee's enterprise unit for US$4 billion in another all-cash transaction that is expected to close by the end of 2021. 

FireEye most recently was a victim of a “nation-state” cyber attack, as a "highly sophisticated threat actor" accessed its internal network and stole several “red team tools”.

At the time, Mandia said the attack was different from the “tens of thousands of incidents” FireEye has responded to over the years.