Google is buying the cybersecurity company that uncovered the SolarWinds hack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The acquisition of Mandiant is valued at approximately $5.4 billion.

Mandiant's operations, which draw on the work of more than 600 security consultants and more than 300 intelligence analysts, will be folded into Google Cloud to create an end-to-end security operations suite.

Organizations around the world are facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the sophistication and severity of attacks that were previously used to target major governments are now being used to target companies in every industry.

Mandiant is best known for uncovering the devastating SolarWinds attack, a massive operation thought to be sponsored by the Russian government that compromised computers across the US federal government. The attack went undetected for the best part of a year until Mandiant reported it in December 2020.

Microsoft was rumored to be a potential buyer of Mandiant. The lucrative cloud services market has been dominated by Microsoft and Google.

There has never been a more critical time for cybersecurity. Kevin Mandia, the CEO of Mandiant, said in a press statement that their mission has been to combat cyber attacks and protect their customers from the latest threats. We will change the security industry by delivering expertise and intelligence at scale.