Microsoft is considering a deal to buy cybersecurity firm Mandiant, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Mandiant became a standalone entity again last year when FireEye Inc – which acquired the company in 2013 – sold its products business and the FireEye name for $1.2 billion to a consortium led by private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group.
Mandiant, which has a market capitalization of about $3.6 billion, focuses on cyber-incident response and cybersecurity testing.
A deal to buy Mandiant would help Microsoft beef up its products that protect its clients from cybersecurity threats. The software giant bought two smaller cybersecurity companies in 2021 and said it would spend $20 billion on cybersecurity over the next five years.
Cyberthreats have been rising in severity globally, with Microsoft’s products often in the crosshairs. In March 2021 attackers linked to China used flaws in the code of Microsoft’s Exchange software to break into tens of thousands of organizations. In a breach disclosed in December 2020, suspected Russian hackers compromised popular software from Texas-based firm SolarWinds Corp., inserting malicious code into updates for SolarWinds software, an attack that also impacted Microsoft and many of its customers.
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