F-Secure to buy MWR InfoSecurity

F-Secure has signed an agreement to acquire all the outstanding shares of MWR InfoSecurity, a privately-held cybersecurity company operating globally from its main offices in the UK, the US, South Africa and Singapore. The acquisition is a significant milestone in the execution of F-Secure’s growth strategy, and makes it the largest European single source of cybersecurity services and detection and response solutions.

“The acquisition brings MWR InfoSecurity’s industry-renowned technologies to F-Secure making our detection and response offering unrivalled. Their threat hunting platform (Countercept) is one of the most advanced in the market and is an excellent complement to our existing technologies,” said F-Secure CEO Samu Konttinen. “I’m thrilled to welcome MWR InfoSecurity’s employees to F-Secure. With their vast experience and hundreds of experts performing cybersecurity services on four continents, we will have unparalleled visibility into real-life cyber-attacks 24/7. This enables us to detect indicators across an incredible breadth of attacks so we can protect our customers effectively. As most companies currently lack these capabilities, this represents a significant opportunity to accelerate F-Secure’s growth.”

With close-to 400 employees, MWR InfoSecurity is among the largest cybersecurity service providers serving enterprises globally. MWR InfoSecurity has highly skilled experts in offensive techniques who understand the attacker mindset and is well-known in the industry for its technical expertise and research. Its threat hunting platform Countercept provides extensive proactive attack detection and complements F-Secure’s existing strengths.

Additionally, F-Secure’s portfolio will be enhanced by MWR InfoSecurity’s suite of managed phishing protection services (phishd). As cybercriminals increasingly target companies through their employees, it’s crucial to enable company personnel to identify and avoid these email-borne attacks.

“We’ve always relied on research-driven innovations executed by the best people and technology. This approach has earned MWR InfoSecurity the trust of some of the largest organizations in the world,” says MWR InfoSecurity CEO, Ian Shaw who will join F-Secure’s Leadership Team after closing of the transaction in July. “We see this approach thriving at F-Secure, and we look forward to working together so that we can break new ground in the cyber security industry.”

The combined company will have hundreds of the world’s best cybersecurity consultants, making F-Secure one of the few truly global technical security advisors positioned to help organizations fight today’s most sophisticated threats. Learnings from the most challenging incident investigations and from targeted attack simulations provide insights that feed directly back into product creation, ensuring the company’s detection and response solutions are constantly upgraded to meet the latest threats.

Completion, consideration and financing

The transaction is expected to be completed in early July 2018. The initial cash consideration for the completed acquisition of all of the outstanding shares of MWR InfoSecurity is GBP80 million (EUR 91,6 million), subject to customary cash, debt and working capital adjustments. In addition, an earn-out of a maximum of GBP25 million (EUR28,6 million) in cash will be paid after 18 months of the completion, subject to the achievement of agreed business targets for the period from 1 July, 2018, until 31 December, 2019.