Symphony Technology Group (STG) announced it will purchase McAfee’s enterprise business for $4 billion, leaving the remainder of McAfee’s business as direct to consumer.
Once one of the most well-known and long-established providers of cybersecurity, McAfee’s consumer business has been showing steady growth—especially after its successful IPO last fall. However, its enterprise business has taken hit after hit in the face of competition within the enterprise cybersecurity industry from giants like CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. The division’s operating loss in 2020 was $180, a 19.2 percent increase from its loss of $151 million in 2019.
The split has come as no surprise. In December 2019, McAfee looked into combining its consumer business with the consumer side of NortonLifeLock. Although that merger didn’t come to pass, several months afterward McAfee hired Peter Leav as the new CEO. Leav has been leading the charge to separate the two divisions indefinitely.
McAfee is the second cybersecurity firm to split its enterprise business from its consumer side and sell it off. In 2019, Symantec sold its enterprise side to Broadcom, continuing to offer NortonLifeLock directly to consumers. Symantec is one of McAfee’s largest rivals.
STG has been slowly acquiring enterprise cybersecurity businesses, starting with RedSeal in April 2019 and following with the purchase of RSA in September 2020. McAfee’s enterprise business services will be rebranded under STG’s new leadership.
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