AT&T is acquiring cybersecurity company AlienVault amid a new enterprise push meant to bolster a number of its business-to-business offerings, the duo announced Tuesday. Founded in 2007, the San Mateo, California-based firm will provide AT&T with the hardware and expertise necessary for scaling its enterprise security technologies, with the ultimate goal of the move being to offer those same solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. No financial details of the transaction have been disclosed, though the announcement indicates AlienVault’s existing ranks won’t be significantly altered following the tie-up.
AlienVault raised just over $118 million to date, according to Crunchbase, and with the company saying the deal is likely to materially impact AT&T’s quarterly results, the wireless carrier may have paid over half a billion dollars for the company. The cybersecurity service provider was said to have been considering going public circa 2015 but those plans never materialized and while it ended up being absorbed by AT&T, it’s presently unclear whether the second-largest wireless carrier in the country faced any competition for AlienVault. The deal itself is subject to closing conditions and is expected to close in the third quarter of the year. The transaction doesn’t affect AT&T’s plans to reduce its debt, i.e. its net-debt-to-adjusted-EBITDA ratio following the $85.6 billion acquisition of Time Warner which placed a large strain on the telecom giant.
The two firms are planning on combining their technologies to offer a unified cybersecurity package to enterprise clients but it remains to be seen how their existing customers will be transitioned to the new offerings. The Dallas, Texas-based wireless juggernaut also pledged to continue investing in AlienVault’s Open Threat Exchange and Unified Security Management so as to maintain the company’s tradition of giving back to the cybersecurity community with up-to-date intelligence and other solutions. AT&T recently reiterated its intentions to curb back on capital expenditures following the completion of its plan to launch a national 5G network by 2020.