Mergers and acquisitions were constant in the cybersecurity industry from the first half of 2019 into the second, and this strong pattern of activity continued into the first quarter of 2020.
It's only mid-April, but the industry has already seen plenty of acquisitions, with many in the billion-dollar range. Larger security businesses are broadening their product portfolios with new technologies, as several private equity firms continue to make large investments in security companies – a key trend we noticed in the first few months of the year.
The deals to appear so far in 2020 range in focus from threat protection to enterprise IoT. In early January we saw the sale of Symantec's cybersecurity services business to Accenture; the same day, private equity firm Insight Partners bought security company Armis for a total of $1.1 billion. Shortly ahead of the annual RSA Conference at the end of February, Dell sold RSA to Symphony Technologies for $2.1 billion.
These are only a handful of the M&A deals to catch the eyes of security experts in the first three months of 2020. Here, we take a look back at some of the standout transactions announced in the first quarter and recap the year in M&A, taking a closer look at the trends and what they could mean for the industry. We have no doubt we'll be adding to this list as the year unfolds.
The acquisitions are listed in chronological order.
