AT&T has announced its intention to acquire threat intelligence and SIEM provider AlienVault.
As part of the acquisition, which is expected to close in Q3 2018, AlienVault’s services will be integrated into AT&T’s existing security solutions portfolio. AT&T is particularly interested in adding AlienVault’s enterprise-level threat intelligence capabilities to its offering, giving AT&T business customers access to it once the acquisition closes.
“Regardless of size or industry, businesses today need cyber threat detection and response technologies and services. The current threat landscape has shifted this from a luxury for some, to a requirement for all,” said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO, AT&T Business. “AlienVault’s expertise in threat intelligence will improve our ability to help organizations detect and respond to cybersecurity attacks. Together, with our enterprise-grade detection, response and remediation capabilities, we’re providing scalable, intelligent, affordable security for business customers of all sizes.”
In a press release, AT&T pointed out a 2017 study by the Ponemon Institute, which indicated that more than 61% of small and medium-sized businesses had been breached in the 12 months prior to publication, up from 55% in 2016.
“We’re thrilled to join forces with AT&T. They bring a robust cybersecurity portfolio with an industry-leading technology ecosystem,” said Barmak Meftah, president and CEO of AlienVault. “This deal accelerates our ability to deliver on the AlienVault mission, which is to democratize threat detection and response to companies of all sizes.”
AT&T has said that in addition to integrating AlienVault’s capabilities into its managed services offering, it will continue to support and build on AlienVault’s Unified Security Management platform and open threat intelligence community Open Threat Exchange.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but figures from Crunchbase indicate that AlienVault had raised $118.4 million in funding since it was founded in 2007. The company was previously moving towards an IPO, but it’s far from the only tech company to change its mind on that front.
“The executive bench is full and I’m not going anywhere so sometime in the future, hopefully not too far in the future, we’re thinking about an IPO,” said CEO Barmak Meftah back in 2017.
“If you look at our financials and scale, soon we’ll be in the range of an IPO so at that time we really have to take a look at the health of the equity capital markets,” Meftah said. “The hypothesis is that during the second half of this year there’s going to be a lot of companies that are going to pop out. So ideally we want to see five or six tech companies go out there and see how they do.”
Judging by the decision not to go after the IPO he was previously keen for, it looks like Meftah wasn’t impressed with what he saw over the year. We discussed tech and cybersecurity IPOs recently – looking at some of the trends emerging there, it looks like the choice may have been a safe one.
