FireEye Adds Capabilities with $250 Million Verodin Acquisition

FireEye has acquired Verodin, whose security instrumentation platform (SIP) gauges the effectiveness of customers’ cybersecurity controls, for about $250 million in cash and stock.

The deal closed Monday and is expected to add about $20 million to billings this year and more than $70 million to billings in 2020. Verodin’s platform adds new capabilities to FireEye’s portfolio by identifying gaps in security effectiveness due to equipment misconfiguration, changes in the IT environment, evolving attacker tactics and more.

FireEye’s Bill Robbins

Bill Robbins, FireEye‘s executive vice president of worldwide sales, tells us his company has seen significant improvements in its relationships with, and the revenue contribution from, its partner community over the past three years.

“Today’s acquisition is more good news for our partners as it will allow them to offer their customers the market-leading solution to help organizations proactively measure, test and improve their cybersecurity effectiveness,” he said. “This gives our partners a solution offering that will strengthen their relationships with their customers and create meaningful revenue opportunities for them to pursue.”

The integration of the Verodin platform and FireEye’s technology, intelligence and expertise enhances FireEye’s ability to “relentlessly protect our customers,” Robbins said. Equipped with FireEye’s expertise and intelligence, the Verodin platform tests customers’ security environments against both known and newly discovered threats, he said.

“The combination of FireEye and Verodin will empower customers to rapidly adapt their defense to the evolving threat landscape, while also maximizing ROI from their security investments,” he said. “FireEye, and our partners, will strengthen our competitive advantage in the market by becoming an even more trusted, value-added partner to our collective customers.”

A significant amount of Verodin’s success has come by leveraging strong relationships with their partners, Robbins said. FireEye is “excited about continuing, and strengthening, these existing partner relationships,” he said.

“FireEye’s overall channel and business strategies will not change,” he said. “They are only enhanced by the acquisition of Verodin. We will continue being a strong, focused business partner to the channel by helping them secure their customers and grow their business profitably. And as for our business strategy, Verodin furthers the FireEye vision of delivering the most effective cybersecurity protection with a single platform that blends our technology, intelligence and expertise to make us a seamless, on-demand extension of our customers’ security operations.”

Verodin solutions will continue to be available on a standalone basis through Verodin resellers, as well as through the global community of FireEye channel partners.

“Cybersecurity today is based on assumptions — that technologies work as vendors claim, products are deployed and configured correctly, processes are fully effective, and changes to the environment are properly understood, communicated and implemented,” said Chris Key, Verodin‘s co-founder and CEO prior to the acquisition. “However, the reality is much different for almost every organization and often they discover this only after being on the wrong side of a breach. By joining FireEye, Verodin extends its ability to help customers take a proactive approach to understanding and mitigating the unique risks, inefficiencies and vulnerabilities in their environments.”

For 2019, FireEye currently expects revenue in the range of $890-$900 million, and billings in the range of $935-$955 million.