Report: FireEye Inc. CEO Sees 'Industry Consolidation'

The head of FireEye Inc.

may have stirred the rumor pot ever so gently with public comments Wednesday about prospects for consolidation in the data security industry. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-20/fireeye-ceo-sees-large-companies-coveting-cybersecurity-firms FireEye traded recently at $43.37, up $1.10. FireEye has been subject to at least several buyout rumors, including one shot down only last week by Cisco Systems Inc.'s

chief executive John T. Chambers. But the data security sector will be see "a lot more consolidation" because many larger companies don't have the security assets they want, FireEye Chief Executive Officer David G. DeWalt told Bloomberg Wednesday. DeWalt declined to comment to the news agency on FireEye as an acquisition target. FireEye, with a market capitalization of $6.2 billion, is uninterested in putting itself up for sale until annual revenue exceeds $1 billion, according to a report last week in Re/Code, which cited "sources familiar with the company's management." http://recode.net/2015/05/14/fireeye-falls-after-cisco-slaps-down-buyout-rumors/ FireEye posted 2014 revenue of $425.66 million, up 163 percent from the previous year. Its recent annual loss widened to almost $134 million, from $105.7 million in 2013. FireEye landed in the news Wednesday after it helped discover a security breach at the non-profit insurer CareFirst that may have affected 1.1 million accounts. http://www.wsj.com/articles/health-insurer-carefirst-says-it-was-hacked-1432149975 USA Today noted that FireEye has worked on high-profile attacks against Target, JP Morgan Chase, Sony Pictures, Anthem and others during the past two years. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/05/20/fireeye-mandiant-carefirst/27659481/ "They've ended up being the go-to people," John Kindervag, a security analyst with Forrester Research told the newspaper. "If there's a data breach, that's a name you hear."