FireEye has announced that it has acquired Invotas International, a firm that looks at security automation and orchestration. The firm has not disclosed how much it has paid out in this purchase.

In a post on the company website, CEO Dave De Walt called the move his firm’s "latest game-changer" and said: "The integration of Invotas’ technologies promises to have a profound effect on a world faced with an escalating threat landscape, addressing critical needs of organizations struggling to keep pace with advance of cyber attacks."

Paul Nguyen, Invotas’ chief executive officer, described FireEye as a "perfect fit" for his firm, and said: "The strength of Invotas’ technology centers around its ability to easily integrate into the security ecosystem of an organization and automate key elements of incident response.

Invotas technology, which allows organisations to consolidate data from multiple sources, will be integrated into FireEye’s platform. Customers will be able purchase security technology, and consolidate it into an customised incident response plan.

Bob Tarzey , Analyst and Director at Quocirca said: "As FireEye does broaden its product base, and have more products and services, its customers are going to need a way of having a single view of those and integrating them at a high level, that’s the kind of thing Invotas could help them do. "

It is far from the first time the firm has been engaged in large acquisition activity. It purchased cyber security consultants Mandiant for $1bn in January 2014. Then in January 2016 it announced the purchase of iSight partners for $200m, indicating further moves to becoming a broad security vendor.

"FireEye’s had this huge ongoing success in terms of selling the sandboxing technology it has for spotting threat," said Tarzey. "Although it was growing first it was a one-trick pony, so it’s always needed to diversify and have a broader set of offerings. Mandiant was the first acquisition, and then it bout iSight…which some consider a competitor."

Analysts at the time of the iSight deal said that it indicated consolidation in the cyber security market, something Tarzey said has been going on for some time.

"What what tends to happen in the cyber security industry time and time again…is you get some new type of threat…you get these point solutions, and when they prove their value there’s a rush to buy them up and integrate them into larger vendors," he told CBR.

This is borne out by the increasing amount of m&a activity in the cyber security market in recent times.

In April 2015, Raytheon and Websense announced they came together for a joint venture in a deal worth $1.9bn. On January 15th the joint firm announced that it would now be called Forcepoint.

In September, Microsoft snapped up Israeli cyber security firm Adallom for what CNBC learned was "quite a few hundred million dollars."

Private equity firm JMI Equity also put £32m into Manchester based cyber security software maker Avecto in December 2015.