What makes Thales to acquire Imperva?

The cybersecurity market is rapidly growing. Imperva is a leader in application and data security. To addressable the market, Thales sees this acquisition as an opportunity to capitalize on that growth by adding Imperva's offerings.

Imperva is known for its data security solutions, including protection against cyber threats, data breaches, and insider threats. With the increasing importance of cybersecurity across various industries, Thales might see acquiring Imperva as a means to bolster its own cybersecurity offerings and expand its footprint in the digital security market.

At the same time, Thales has expertise in other cybersecurity areas. This combined offering creates a more comprehensive suite of security solutions for Thales' customers. Both companies share a focus on security, and their areas of expertise complement each other. This allows for a more integrated approach to cybersecurity.

The acquisition of Imperva by Thales could be seen as a strategic move to enhance Thales's position in the cybersecurity sector and strengthen its overall portfolio of products and services.

This is a key milestone for Thales, creating a global leader in cybersecurity, with more than 5,800 cybersecurity experts across 68 countries and €2.4bn in cybersecurity revenue expected in 2024, including civil and defence activities, with double-digit growth expected thereafter.

In addition, the profile of Thales’ Digital Identity and Security (DIS) activity will be significantly enhanced with new financial targets by 2027 (2024-2027 organic sales growth of +6 to +7% and 2027 EBIT margin at 16.5%).

Patrice Caine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Thales, said: “The acquisition of the US company Imperva is an important day for Thales, as it marks a new step in the expansion of our global cybersecurity capabilities for enterprises and governments around the world. We are very excited to welcome the Imperva teams to Thales. The combination of our entities' values and our joint commitment to a future of trust will create significant synergies, business opportunities and major market innovations. With ever-increasing cyber threats against business and government digital infrastructure, Thales is now uniquely positioned to help customers protect the heart of their digital ecosystem: applications, data and identities.”

Together, Thales and Imperva will help customers address cybersecurity challenges that have increased rapidly in frequency, severity, and complexity, with the most comprehensive solutions for the broadest range of application, data security, and identity use cases. These three market segments combined are forecasted to grow significantly in the coming years. According to analysts’ forecast, worldwide end-user spending is projected to total around $20 billion in 2024.

With the addition of Imperva, Thales’ expanded cybersecurity portfolio now offers a highly complementary combination of solutions to help customers secure applications, data and identities across their entire digital ecosystem:

· Application Security: Unified protection for every application and API in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid model. The market leading product suite includes Web Application Firewall (WAF), Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) Protection, Advanced Bot Protection, Application Programming Interface (API) Security, a developer-friendly Content Delivery Network (CDN), and Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP).

· Data Security: Protection and control of access to sensitive data anywhere whether at rest, in motion or in use. The product suite includes the CipherTrust Data Security Platform, Imperva Data Security Fabric, as well as the Luna and payShield Hardware Security Modules, often used as the root of trust for cryptographic operations.

· Identity & Access Management: seamless, secure and trusted access to applications and digital services for customers, employees and partners. The product suite includes the OneWelcome Identity Platform and SafeNet Trusted Access.

This is Thales’ ninth acquisition in the digital security area over the last nine years, and the second largest in the Group's history after Gemalto, world leader in digital security. After the completed acquisitions of Tesserent, the leading player in cybersecurity in Australia, S21sec & Excellium, two major players in cybersecurity consulting, integration and managed services in Europe, and OneWelcome, a European leader in Customer Identity and Access Management, the integration of Imperva within Thales will position the Group’s cybersecurity business as one of the top 5 global leaders in cybersecurity.