Imperva acquisition tale comes to completion earlier than expected

French vendor, Thales, has acquired US data and application cybersecurity company Imperva for $3.6bn

Thales has announced it has completed the acquisition of Imperva, earlier than expected - previously foreseen at the beginning of 2024.

The acquisition, first announced in July, will create a "global leader in cybersecurity", according to Thales, with more than 5,800 cybersecurity experts across 68 countries and €2.4bn in cybersecurity revenue expected in 2024, including civil and defence activities and with double-digit growth expected thereafter.

Thales also said the transaction will generate significant value creation for Thales' shareholders in line with the targets communicated in July 2023, when announcing the acquisition.

Patrice Caine, chairman and CEO of Thales, said: "The acquisition of the US company Imperva is an important day for Thales, as it marks a new step in the expansion of our global cybersecurity capabilities for enterprises and governments around the world. We are very excited to welcome the Imperva teams to Thales.

"The combination of our entities' values and our joint commitment to a future of trust will create significant synergies, business opportunities and major market innovations.

"With ever-increasing cyber threats against business and government digital infrastructure, Thales is now uniquely positioned to help customers protect the heart of their digital ecosystem: applications, data and identities."

With the addition of Imperva, Thales' expanded cybersecurity portfolio now offers a complementary combination of solutions to help customers secure applications, data and identities across their entire digital ecosystem.

Jesper Trolle, CEO Exclusive Networks also commented on the acquisition: "As a long-standing partner of both Thales and Imperva, we are delighted with the combination of two companies that we know and value.

"This acquisition marks a key step in Thales' ambition to become a global leader in cybersecurity, reinforcing its strength in data security and expanding into the buoyant application security market.

"With this new combined value proposition, Thales will be uniquely positioned to offer even more innovative and effective solutions to address the growing security and compliance challenges faced by organisations around the world."

This is Thales' ninth acquisition in the digital security area over the last nine years, and the second largest in the Group's history after Gemalto, world leader in digital security.

After the completed acquisitions of Australian cybersecurity firm, Tesserent, S21sec and Excellium, two players in cybersecurity consulting, integration and managed services in Europe, and OneWelcome, a European customer identity and access management firm, the integration of Imperva within Thales will boost even further the group's global cybersecurity business.