Contact: Brenon Daly
Opening on Tuesday, the RSA Conference runs its weeklong shindig under the tagline, “Where the world talks security.” When it comes to M&A, however, infosec acquirers are doing more than talking – they’re putting their money where their mouths are and shopping at a record rate.
Already this year, buyers representing a broad swath of the tech M&A community have announced 59 transactions valued at $8.1bn, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. Annualized, that would put the total number of infosec deals announced this year at right around 200, significantly ahead of last year’s record number of 136.
Keep in mind, too, that infosec M&A activity in 2014 was about 30% higher than any year we’ve seen. (We consider the number of transactions – rather than spending attached to them – as the most accurate gauge of the overall vitality of M&A in what’s a relatively narrow market such as infosec, where a large print or two can dramatically swing aggregate spending. For context, infosec currently accounts for roughly 2% of the overall TMT M&A market, both in terms of annual deal volume and annual deal value.)
The boom in buying shouldn’t really surprise anyone, given the steady increases in infosec budgets coupled with the steady increases in security breaches (Sony and Anthem Inc, among others). Bankers we surveyed last December told us they expected infosec to the be the second-busiest sector for M&A in 2015, trailing only slightly behind mobility.
That bullish forecast is certainly coming through in the prints so far this year, which are running 40% higher than the same period in 2014. Maybe more noteworthy than the number of infosec transactions in 2015 is the breadth of infosec buyers. This year’s record acceleration has been driven by the usual suspects being active (Proofpoint has put up a print, while Checkpoint has inked two deals); PE shops getting busy (Bain Capital acquiring Blue Coat, Marlin Equity Partners purchasing the divested Fidelis business); as well as new buyers stepping into the market, such as Internet vendors (salesforce.com reaching for Toopher, PayPal snagging CyActive).
Information security M&A activity
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Source: 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase
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