Thales finalized the acquisition of the American Imperva, valued at 3.6 billion euros, earlier than expected, mentions the company, which thus announces that it will become “one of the five world leaders” in cybersecurity.
The operation, announced last July, was initially due to be completed in early 2024, and is described by Thales as a “major turning point”.
This is the second largest acquisition in the history of Thales after its takeover bid for smart card specialist Gemalto (4.8 billion euros in 2019).
Imperva brings 2.4 billion euros in annual turnover to Thales
The firm plans to bring together its IT security activities around three main pillars, identity, data security and application security. Themes then declined into security products intended for businesses and critical customers, such as States, as well as in “a complete suite of services.”
In addition to synergies of 110 million euros, Thales believes that its activities are highly complementary with those of Imperva.
The company’s portfolio brings together firewall solutions, protection against denial of service attacks, and even data management to counter data leaks.
Hunger for applications for Thales
The company is “a leader in cybersecurity that protects critical applications, APIs (software interfaces, editor’s note), and large-scale data,” explains Thales.
Known at its inception as WebCohort, the company was launched by one of the founders of Check Point, Shlomo Kramer. The firm, which counts a third of the “Fortune 100” companies – the hundred largest American companies – as clients, achieved more than 500 million euros in turnover in 2022 and finally has around 1,400 employees.
Imperva was acquired by investment firm Thoma Bravo in 2019 for $2.1 billion.
The French group has increased its acquisitions in the field of cybersecurity in recent months, notably with the Australian Tesserent, the Spanish S21sec, the Luxembourg Excellium and the Dutch OneWelcome.