FireEye shells out $186m on security automation firm

Cybersecurity vendor acquires Respond Software as it receives $400m strategic investment

FireEye has acquired cybersecurity automation specialist Respond Software for $186m.

Respond is billed as a "cybersecurity investigation automation" company and received $20m in Series B funding last year.

The acquisition of Respond brings new market opportunities for FireEye to deliver its detection and response offerings to customers, it claimed.

Respond's specialist Respond Analyst tool will be integrated as a "key part" of FireEye's Mnadiant portfolio of cybersecurity solutions. Respond Analyst is a detection and response engine that automates the correlation of multi-sourced attack evidence using cloud-based data models.

"With Mandiant's position on the front lines, we know what to look for in an attack, and Respond's cloud-based machine learning productises our expertise to deliver faster outcomes and protect more customers," said Kevin Mandia, FireEye's CEO.

"This creates a learning system with new capabilities that will enable us to expand our Mandiant portfolio and drive new extended detection and response (XDR) revenue through our Mandiant Advantage platform."

Respond's CEO Mike Armistead added: "Customers rely on our XDR engine to investigate more alerts at a deeper level for far less cost than existing processes and tools.

"Respond's product dramatically reduces time spent investigating false positives as it connects the dots among siloed, multi-vendor security controls in an easy-to-deploy cloud-based package.

"Now coupled with Mandiant's world-class threat intelligence and incident response expertise feeding our models, customers can be confident the most up-to-date and relevant attack tactics and techniques are recognized and appropriately escalated. This results in more coverage, faster resolution of incidents, and ultimately, less risk at a lower cost."

FireEye revealed in a separate statement that it had received $400m investment led by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities. The funding will be used to support the vendor's ambitions in the intelligent cybersecurity platform and services market.