Moving the Mission Forward: Mandiant Joins Google Cloud

Written by: Kevin Mandia

Google’s acquisition of Mandiant is now complete, marking a great moment for our team and for the security community we serve.

As part of Google Cloud, Mandiant now has a far greater capability to close the security gap created by a growing number of adversaries. In my 29 years on the front lines of securing networks, I have seen criminals, nation states, and plain bad actors bring harm to good people. By combining our expertise and intelligence with the scale and resources of Google Cloud, we can make a far greater difference in preventing and countering cyber attacks, while pinpointing new ways to hold adversaries accountable.

When I founded Mandiant Corporation in 2004, we set out to change how businesses protected themselves from cyber threats. We felt the technologies people depended on to defend ultimately failed to innovate at the pace of the attackers. In order to deliver cyber defenses as dynamic as the threats, we believed you had to have your finger on the pulse of adversaries around the world. To address this need, we set out to respond to as many cyber security breaches as possible. We wanted to learn first-hand how adversaries were circumventing common safeguards with new and novel attacks; monitor the development and deployment of attacker tools, their infrastructure, and their underground economies; and study the attacker’s targeting trends.

Armed with this knowledge and experience, we felt we were best positioned to close the gap between the offense and the defense in the security arms race.

As we investigated thousands of security incidents over the years, we honed the deep expertise required to find the proverbial needle in the haystack: the trace evidence that something unlawful, unauthorized, or simply unacceptable had occurred. We believed this skill was the foundation to automating security operations through software, so that organizations and governments around the world could easily implement effective security capabilities.

By joining forces with Google Cloud, we can accelerate this vision. I am very excited that Mandiant and Google Cloud can now work together to leverage our frontline intelligence and security expertise to address a common goal: to relentlessly protect organizations against cyber attacks and provide solutions that allow defenders to operate with confidence in their cyber security posture. More specifically, we can leverage our intelligence differentiator to automate security operations and validate security effectiveness.

Mandiant Remains Relentless

While we are now part of Google Cloud, Mandiant is not going away—in fact, it’s getting stronger. We will maintain our focus on knowing the most about threat actors and extend our reputation for delivering world-class threat intelligence, consulting services, and security solutions.

Automating Security Operations

Today’s announcement should be welcome news to organizations facing cyber security challenges that have accelerated in frequency, severity, and diversity. I have always believed that organizations can remain resilient in the fight against cyber threats if they have the right combination of expertise, intelligence, and adaptive technology.

This is why I am a proponent of Google Cloud’s shared fate model. By taking an active stake in the security posture of customers, we can help organizations find and validate potential security issues before they become an incident. Google Cloud and Mandiant have the knowledge and skills to provide an incredibly efficient and effective security operations platform. We are building a “security brain” that scales our team to address the expertise shortage.

Validating Security Effectiveness

Google Cloud’s reach, resources, and focus will accelerate another Mandiant imperative: validating security effectiveness. Organizations today lack the tools needed to validate the effectiveness of security, quantify risk, and exhibit operational competency. Mandiant is working to provide visibility and evidence on the status of how effective security controls are against adversary threats. With this data, organizations have a clear line of sight into optimizing their individual environment against relevant threats.

Advancing Our Mission

Google Cloud has made security the cornerstone of its commitment to users around the world, and the Mandiant acquisition underscores that focus.

We are thrilled to continue moving our mission forward alongside the Google Cloud team. Together, I believe Mandiant and Google Cloud will help reinvent how organizations protect, detect, and respond to threats. This will benefit not only a growing base of customers and partners, but the security community at large.

You can learn more about this milestone moment and the exciting opportunities ahead in this blog post by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, "Google + Mandiant: Transforming Security Operations and Incident Response."