Description
FireEye is a publicly traded cybersecurity company headquartered in Milpitas, California. It has been involved in the detection and prevention of major cyber attacks. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and analyze IT security risks. FireEye was founded in 2004.
Initially, it focused on developing virtual machines that would download and test internet traffic before transferring it to a corporate or government network. The company diversified over time, in part through acquisitions. In 2014, it acquired Mandiant, which provides incident response services following the identification of a security breach. FireEye went public in 2013. USAToday says FireEye "has been called in to investigate high-profile attacks against Target, JP Morgan Chase, Sony Pictures, Anthem and others". Yahoo Finance says FireEye is again the fastest-growing cyber security firm, according to Deloitte.
History
FireEye was founded in 2004 by Ashar Aziz, a former Sun Microsystems engineer. It received early investments from the likes of Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners in 2005, and DAG Ventures in 2008. FireEye's first commercial product was not developed and sold until 2010. That same year, FireEye expanded into the Middle East. This was followed by the opening of new offices in Asia Pacific in 2010, Europe in 2011 and Africa in 2013.
In December 2012, founder Aziz stepped down as CEO and former McAfee CEO David DeWalt was appointed to the position. DeWalt was recruited in order to prepare the company for an initial public offering (IPO). The following year, FireEye raised an additional $50 million in venture capital, bringing its total funding to $85 million. In late 2013, FireEye went public, raising $300 million.
At the time, FireEye was growing rapidly. It had 175 employees in 2011, which grew to 900 by June 2013. Revenues multiplied eight-fold between 2010 and 2012. However, FireEye was not yet profitable, due to high operating costs such as research and development expenses.
In December 2013, FireEye acquired Mandiant for $1 billion. Mandiant was a private company founded in 2004 by Kevin Mandia that provided incident response services in the event of a data security breach. Mandiant was known for investigating high-profile hacking groups. Before the acquisition, FireEye would often identify a security breach, then partner with Mandiant to investigate who the hackers were. Mandiant became a subsidiary of FireEye.
In late 2014, FireEye initiated a secondary offering, selling another $1.1 billion in shares, in order to fund development of a wider range of products. Shortly afterward, FireEye acquired another data breach investigation company, nPulse, for approximately $60 million. By 2015, FireEye was making more than $100 million in annual revenue, but was still unprofitable, largely due to research and development spending.
In January 2016, FireEye acquired iSIGHT Partners for $275 million. iSIGHT was a threat intelligence company that gathered information about hacker groups and other cybersecurity risks. This was followed by the acquisition of Invotas, an IT security automation company. DeWalt stepped down as CEO in 2016 and was replaced by Mandiant CEO and former FireEye President Kevin Mandia. Afterwards, there was a downsizing and restructuring in response to lower-than-expected sales, resulting in a layoff of 300-400 employees. Profit and revenue increased on account of shifts to a subscription model and lower costs.
