Google to acquire cybersecurity firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion

Google’s Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai gives a keynote address during the opening day of the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on March 2, 2015.

In order to better protect its cloud customers, the company plans to buy Mandiant for around $5.4 billion.

The Mountain View search giant said it will pay $23 a share for the publicly traded firm.

If the deal goes through, Mandiant will join the cloud computing division of the search engine.

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.

He said that they look forward to having Mandiant on board to help customers address their most important security challenges.

The deal is expected to close later this year.

The Information reported that the company was interested in being acquired by Google.

Mandiant, which has a market value around $5.25 billion, was previously under the FireEye umbrella. The SolarWinds hack that attacked government systems last year was discovered by Microsoft.

With cyber attacks increasing by the day and cyber warfare underway from Russia/state sponsored cyber terrorism organizations, the analyst said that the company is doubling down on its cyber security footprint.

The deal is expected to have a major impact across the cybersecurity space.

He said that cloud stalwarts Amazon and Microsoft will be pressured into M&A and further bulk up their cloud platforms.

We believe cyber names such as Varonis, Tenable, CyberArk, Qualys, Rapid7, SailPoint, and Ping are potential M&A candidates given their laser focus on cyber security.

Cybersecurity stocks have been resilient in the current market as most stocks see a heavy sell-off.

CNBC has additional reporting by Sarah Alessandrini.