Mandia became a national figure last year after his firm Mandiant, which specializes in responding to computer network breaches, published a 60-page report that revealed the Chinese theft of American trade secrets. The revelation propelled Mandia and his company to the forefront of a national security firestorm.

Regardless of the attention, Mandia decided an acquisition — or what he prefers to call a “merger” — was in his company’s best interest. “FireEye was the leader in detection, and we were the leader in ‘let’s-go-from-detection-to-resolution-as-fast as-possible,'” explains Mandia. “It was a way to IPO through their IPO, quite frankly. It was a way to get global overnight, and it was a way to get a sales and marketing infrastructure we lacked.”

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Mandia now serves as FireEye’s COO, overseeing the company’s newly combined services businesses — a broad swath that includes overseeing the new solutions, like the slew of products ready to launch at the RSA Conference at the end of February. According to Mandia, many of those new products will be actually projects that were in development at Mandient before the acquisition. 

Looking ahead, Mandia says FireEye’s mission remains simple: get faster and better. Explains Mandia: “We’re going to learn on every breach … detect better than anything else, and we’re also constantly trying to go from ‘detect-to-fix’ as fast as possible. Call it ‘alert to fix in’ under 10 minutes.”