French multinational Thales, whose broad reach extends into such areas as defense, aerospace, and transportation, is continuing a multi-year spending spree in cybersecurity with plans to buy US data and application security specialist Imperva for $3.6 billion.
Thales executives expect the deal to grow its cybersecurity business’ annual revenue to more than $2.66 billion, with Imperva contributing about $500 million to that.
“With this acquisition, we are seizing a unique opportunity to accelerate our cybersecurity capabilities and are taking an important step towards our ambition to building a world-class global cybersecurity integrated player, providing a comprehensive portfolio of products and services,” Thales Chair and CEO Patrick Caine said in a statement.
The company is buying Imperva from private equity titan Thoma Bravo, which acquired the San Mateo, California-based vendor in 2019 for $2.1 billion, taking Imperva private eight years after the company had gone public.
Imperva brings with it broad portfolio that also includes network security. It’s product lineup includes a web application firewall, attack analytics, API security features, and tools to protect third-party JavaScript code, runtime, and serverless environments. It also includes defenses against bots and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
The 21-year-old vendor also offers protection for hybrid and multicloud environments.
Thales Gets into Application Security Field
With Imperva in the fold, Thales will be able to offer application security products and services and expand its data security portfolio, adding to its strength in identity security. It’s a significant move for Thales. Research firm Statista is expecting the global application security market to grow from $6 billion this year to $10.99 billion in 2028.
Imperva CEO Pam Murphy said the deal, which is expected to close in early 2024, will extend the reach of her company’s capabilities, such as web application firewall, AI-powered risk analysis, real-time monitoring, and intrusion detection in databases, on premises, and in the cloud.
The goal is to “simplify the greatest security challenges facing organizations today: protecting digital identities, applications, APIs, and data in any environment and in any industry,” Murphy said in a statement.
Imperva also has more than 1,400 employees and a global reach, monitoring threats in 180 countries. Customers include about 35 percent of Fortune 100 companies and the customer base hails from such industries as financial services, telecommunications, energy, healthcare, retail, and e-commerce.
Buying Imperva should help Thales expand its presence in the US and elsewhere. According to Enlyft, a software company whose tolls help buyers connect with potential customers, Imperva has more than 6,700 customers, with more than half in the US and from the IT and services industry.
In 2022, the company, helped by its broad recurring-revenue strategy, reached $500 million in revenue, according to Thales.
For its part, in the first half of the year, Thales, which was founded in 2000, generated $9.63 billion in revenue – a 5.6% year-over-year jump – and brought in $9.52 billion in orders, a 24% drop.
Building Through Acquisitions
Imperva will add application and software security capabilities to the cybersecurity offerings that Thales has been building out for more than five years, primarily through acquisitions. In 2017, Thales bought identification and data protection firm Gemalto for $5.5 billion and last year closed deals for two European security companies, Excellium (from Belgium and Luxembourg, with expertise in information systems security) and S21sec (Spain and Portugal, cybersecurity services).
Thales last month said it is buying Tesserent, a cybersecurity products and services startup from Australia, for $176 million.
During its time under Thoma Bravo, Imperva made its own share of deals, buying Distil Networks, a bot management company, in 2019, JSonar (database security) in 2020, and CloudVector (API security) in 2021.
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