Thales, a prominent player in the global technology industry, has announced the completion of its acquisition of the cybersecurity firm Imperva. This move, which marks Thales' ninth acquisition in the digital security field in less than a decade, was valued at USD $3.6 billion.
In the wake of this acquisition, Thales is now one of the world's top five companies dedicated to safeguarding the core elements of the digital environment, applications, data, and identities.
This landmark acquisition follows their purchase of Australian-based cybersecurity company Tesserent last October for AUD $185 million. The union of Imperva and Thales is poised to address the rapidly growing issue of cybersecurity, which has seen a rise in complexity, severity, and frequency.
The pairing will provide the most all-encompassing solutions for a wide array of application, data security, and identity use cases. Analysts forecast worldwide end-user spending to total around USD $20 billion in these three market segments by 2024.
Patrice Caine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Thales, underlined the day's celebratory spirit. He 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."
Thales' expanded cybersecurity portfolio now provides a highly complementary set of solutions to help customers secure applications, data, and identities across their entire digital ecosystem. This includes application security, data security, and identity and access management.
Jesper Trolle, CEO of Exclusive Networks, an established partner of both Thales and Imperva, welcomes the combination of the two entities, stating, "This acquisition marks a key step in Thales' ambition to become a global leader in cybersecurity, reinforcing its strength in data security and expanding into the buoyant application security market."
"With this new combined value proposition, Thales will be uniquely positioned to offer even more innovative and effective solutions to address the growing security and compliance challenges faced by organisations around the world," said Trolle.
The acquisition of Imperva elevates Thales' digital security workforce in North America by approximately a third. Thales invests USD $4 billion each year in R&D. As a reputed innovator, it has 20,000 patents in its portfolio, with over half of these related to key technologies like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, big data, cloud technology, augmented reality, and quantum technologies.