Norton and Avast become an 8 billion dollar cybersecurity giant

NortonLifeLock and Avast have announced a merger (which we anticipated about a month ago), under which Norton will purchase the full amount of available Avast stock in order to incorporate it into its cybersecurity business. The deal, reported by colleagues at The Verge, worth more than $ 8 billion, will generate a cybersecurity giant with a total of approximately 500 million customers.

Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock, exalted the opportunities created by this merger, stating that:

With this combination, we can strengthen our cybersecurity platform and (...) we will also have the ability to further accelerate innovation to transform cyber safety.

Avast CEO Ondřej Vlček, on the other hand, added that

At a time when global cyber threats are growing, but cybersecurity penetration remains very low, along with NortonLifeLock will be able to accelerate our shared vision of providing consumer-friendly protection around the world.

Cybersecurity concerns have increased at a breakneck pace along with pervasive blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, which add to the already valuable data that consumers and companies keep in their machines. And it will only increase in the wake of increasingly sophisticated threats: legions of malware-infected PCs running botnets, ransomware attacks holding companies hostage, attacks on critical service infrastructures - these are just some of the different attack vectors facing them. .

The merger aims to combine the expertise of both companies in their respective fields, with the resulting company looking to be the perfect solution for both privacy-conscious users (one of Avast's strongest features) and NortonLifeLock's focus on identity security.

Avast has already established itself as a major player in the cybersecurity space since its creation in 2010, and its success has led to the acquisition of another industry company, AVG, in 2016. NortonLifeLock, however, is what Symantec (born 1991) remains in the consumer arena, after the latter sold its enterprise security solutions to Broadcom in 2019.

Norton 360 Deluxe 15-month license, the ideal suite to protect your devices, is available on Amazon at a discounted price.