A typical consulting acquisition for someone like Accenture could be $250-500k per head. I realize this firm is deeply specialized and at the top of their industry, but it is a massive premium.
Google is coming from ~last place on enterprise+gov security relative to Microsoft and Amazon, which is maybe 75% of the market (and ignoring the Splunks of the world), and the ability to grow there requires real skills in services. Mandiant, in turn, is in a league of their own here, in brand if not practice. More about amazing IR/hunt/etc, vs say SIEM configuration, so a lot of line blurring & potential skillset clash for achieving their value, but still. Google+MS internal security teams are likewise trusted, but only Microsoft's are considered collaborative, so Google's are ~useless from a services gap perspective. So from a strategic view, this jumps them from last place to ~first. (And Microsoft's main value in buying would have been just to prevent AWS/Google from doing so.)
So as long as they have amazing handcuffs on the CEO, it's probably more like $1M per employee and $100M+ for the CEO (if real handcuffs) + brand.
An independent Mandiant is amazing for the ecosystem, but so goes. Over all though, probably still net win for folks involved + community - Google getting even more serious here is great!
It’s funny / depressing that Microsoft is not in last place given the frequency, severity and rank embarrassment-level of the slew of recent Azure vulnerabilities that have turned up.
