FireEye Boosts Incident Response With New Mandiant Services

FireEye, Inc. (NASDAQ:FEYE) recently introduced two new FireEye Mandiant services — Purple Team and Continuous Purple Team Assessments. These services will enable organizations to evaluate their security programs against attack scenarios simulated by Verodin Security Instrumentation Platform.

Reportedly, Purple Team Assessments combine the best offense and defense practices and help organizations quantify their security effectiveness and improve risk position.

Purple team assessments are a collaborative effort among the red teams that simulate attacks and blue teams that defend against the attacks. Mandiant experts function as the red team and supplement a company’s blue team.

The Continuous Purple Team Assessments is an offering wherein an organization’s security team can train and improve its detection and response capabilities over a period of three to six months while Mandiant experts use the Verodin platform to execute attacker tools, tactics and procedures.

Need for Incident Response

Without testing the efficacy of security controls, security teams may base their decisions on assumptions, which can hamper their ability to detect and respond to a security breach.

Last year, Gemalto (AS:GTO) concluded from its research that businesses differ in their capability to study data that has been collected. About 65% responders don’t have the proper resources to analyze data and therefore are unable to do so.

Moreover, about 50% of IT professionals say perimeter security is effective in protecting their networks. However, most of them believe unauthorized users can access their corporate networks.

One of the biggest reasons for a company to invest in incident response is to avoid costs related to breaches of sensitive data. Potential costs of a security breach are increasing day by day. Per Cybersecurity Ventures, the estimated costs related to cybercrime damages are expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021. The costs include upgrading IT infrastructure and paying legal fees and government fines.

These statistics highlight the bright prospects of FireEye’s solid incident response services. In the last reported quarter, revenues from FireEye’s Mandiant Professional Services jumped 15% from the year-ago quarter to $46 million.

Competitive Position

With growing incidents and importance of incident response, security vendors and other companies are upping their efforts in this space.

For instance, recently, Nerds On Site — a mobile IT solutions company — launched its CyberSecurity Incident Response to address cyberattacks with minimal damage, recovery time and cost.

Moreover, IBM’s (NYSE:IBM) X-Force, its IT security and incident response division, is managed out of five global round-the-clock SOCs.

Nonetheless, with strong expertise and client portfolio, FireEye is poised to maintain its position in the incident response space.

Notably, FireEye's Purple Team service offering is witnessing growing adoption and has already been adopted by big companies, including a Fortune 500 healthcare company.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

FireEye currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

A few top-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) and Five9, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVN) , each flaunting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth rate for Alteryx and Five9 is currently pegged at 17.62% and 10%, respectively.

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