• Dive Brief: 

• FireEye, which uncovered the backdoor attack on SolarWinds in December, said the incident did not have a major impact on its fourth-quarter business, since it was already operating at capacity, according to CEO Kevin Mandia. The discovery has fueled additional customer demand, which should be reflected in deferred revenue during 2021.
• There is no evidence that a third-party has used any of the Red Team tools that were stolen from FireEye, according to Mandia. He said the company constantly updates its research and development for the Red Team based on the adversaries it responds to. 
• The cybersecurity firm reported record revenue of $248 million during the fourth quarter on significant gains in its platform, cloud subscription and managed services businesses, exceeding its profit expectations. Revenue was up 5% compared with $235 million in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 6% for the year to a record $941 million in 2020, compared with $889 million in the year-ago period. 

Dive Insight:

In the first earnings report since discovering the Sunburst supply chain attack on SolarWinds, the Milpitas, California-based security firm earned widespread praise from Wall Street analysts and reported significant growth as it moved further into subscription-based security services. 

"Once we discovered the SolarWinds implant we quickly built the capability to detect it with our products, thereby protecting customers and demonstrating the power of our innovation cycle," CEO Kevin Mandia said during the company's quarterly conference call with securities analysts. "We also shared all the details of the Sunburst implant and the attacker techniques publicly, providing the security community knowledge required to secure our collective gains."

He said the incident reflected the importance of the company's Mandiant incident responders, who identify how attackers are evading security safeguards and provide FireEye with information about the attacker's behavior, before other organizations even realize the threat exists. 

During the quarter, FireEye expanded its business through a series of new investments and acquisitions. In November, FireEye received a $400 million strategic investment led by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities along with ClearSky, an investment firm that focuses on cybersecurity. 

That funding was used to back FireEye's acquisition of Respond Software, which added a cloud-based machine learning technology to help detect and respond to threats on a faster scale. 

FireEye narrowed its quarterly losses in the fourth quarter to $39.7 million, compared with a loss of $49.2 million, year-ago period. The company said it expects revenue between $235 million and $238 million during the first quarter. For the year, FireEye estimates revenue between $990 million and $1.01 billion.