FireEye has agreed to sell its FireEye Products business and brand name to a private equity firm in a deal that will see the Mandiant business it bought several years ago become a standalone company again.

The $1.2 billion all-cash sale to a consortium led by Symphony Technology Group (STG) is expected to close by the end of Q4 2021.

It will see STG acquire FireEye’s network, email, endpoint and cloud security products — alongside its related security management and orchestration platform.

After its acquisition by FireEye in 2014, Mandiant and founder Kevin Mandia were instrumental in expanding the new company’s focus from web, email and data center security to threat intelligence and incident response services.

Over the intervening years, the company has been busy dealing with the aftermath of countless breaches at big-name firms and government organizations.

FireEye’s work investigating an audacious attack on its own systems uncovered the infamous SolarWinds attacks, which subsequently found that at least nine US government agencies were compromised.

FireEye CEO, Kevin Mandia, argued that the separation of the two businesses again would enable the high-growth Mandiant to thrive.

“After closing, we will be able to concentrate exclusively on scaling our intelligence and frontline expertise through the Mandiant Advantage platform, while the FireEye Products business will be able to prioritize investment on its cloud-first security product portfolio,” he added.

“STG’s focus on fueling innovative market leaders in software and cybersecurity makes them an ideal partner for FireEye Products. We look forward to our relationship and collaboration on threat intelligence and expertise.”

William Chisholm, managing partner at STG, argued that FireEye’s cloud-first XDR platform would play a mission-critical role for current and prospective customers.

“We believe that there is enormous untapped opportunity for the business that we are excited to crystallize by leveraging our significant security software sector experience and our market leading carve-out expertise,” he said.

The private equity firm in March agreed to buy McAfee’s enterprise business for $4 billion.