AT&T to buy San Mateo, California-based cybersecurity company AlienVault

AT&T announced Tuesday that it has a deal in place to buy cybersecurity company AlienVault, but financial terms weren't available.

AlienVault offers tools that identify and manage cyberattacks through its Unified Security Management (USM) platform. It also hosts an online community forum called Open Threat Exchange (OTX) that lets security professionals and researchers share and report information on threats. The USM platform combines security capabilities with expert threat intelligence that is updated every 30 minutes with data from OTX that has been analyzed and classified by the AlienVault Labs team.

AT&T said the addition of AlienVault would help it expand its cybersecurity offerings to smaller businesses. AT&T also said that the acquisition wasn't expected to have a material effect on its results.

The deal is slated to close in the third quarter of this year once it passes the usual regulatory hurdles. The two companies will continue to run independently until the deal closes. AT&T said it would continue to invest in and build on the USM platform and OTX community as it integrates AlienVault into its own cybersecurity portfolio.

AlienVault will be folded into AT&T’s Edge-to-Edge Intelligence capabilities, which span the core of a company’s network to all endpoints, to enable actionable intelligence in near-real time

"AlienVault’s expertise in threat intelligence will improve our ability to help organizations detect and respond to cybersecurity attacks," said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business, in a prepared statement. "Together, with our enterprise-grade detection, response and remediation capabilities, we’re providing scalable, intelligent, affordable security for business customers of all sizes."

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After being founded in Madrid, Spain, in 2007, AlienVault moved its headquarters to San Mateo, California, in 2012. AlienVault is a privately held company with investments from Intel Capital, Trident Capital, and GGV Capital, among others.

According to its website, AlienVault has more than 700,000 customers worldwide, including Subaru, Foot Locker and Domino's.