San Francisco, Mar 8 (IANS): Google on Tuesday announced to acquire leading cyber defense and response company Mandiant in an all-cash deal of $5.4 billion.

Upon the close of the acquisition, Mandiant will join Google Cloud.

The acquisition of Mandiant will complement Google Cloud's existing strengths in security, the company said in a statement.

"Organizations around the world are facing unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as the sophistication and severity of attacks that were previously used to target major governments are now being used to target companies in every industry," said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud.

"We look forward to welcoming Mandiant to Google Cloud to further enhance our security operations suite and advisory services, and help customers address their most important security challenges," he added.

With the addition of Mandiant, Google Cloud will deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments.

Mandiant brings real-time and in-depth threat intelligence gained on the frontlines of cybersecurity with the largest organisations in the world.

"Since our founding in 2004, Mandiant's mission has been to combat cyber attacks and protect our customers from the latest threats," said Kevin Mandia, CEO, Mandiant. "To that end, we are thrilled to be joining forces with Google Cloud. Together, we will deliver expertise and intelligence at scale, changing the security industry."

The acquisition of Mandiant is expected to close later this year.