On January 2, 2014, FireEye announced the acquisition of Mandiant for almost USD $1 billion. Both companies focus on security threats missed by traditional security vendors. FireEye had gone public just three months earlier, and is currently valued at almost USD $7 billion.1 Mandiant focuses on incident response, threat intelligence, and endpoint security products (primarily providing incident response data). The combination of the two companies potentially provides enterprises with expanded coverage for advanced malware attacks.

Both companies focus on protecting governments and enterprises, rather than consumers, from advanced malware attacks. FireEye focuses on detecting incoming malware, while Mandiant is best known for its expertise in responding to successful breaches. Mandiant achieved notoriety in 2013 with its publication of the APT1 report, which firmly accused the Chinese military of causing multiple high-profile cyber attacks in recent years that targeted western governments, private enterprises, and political adversaries.

NSS Labs considers this to be a high-risk move by FireEye, which, if executed well, will pay off handsomely for the combined entity.