Two multi-billion dollar security-focused buyouts took center stage in August 2019 but overall financing activity shrunk to its lowest mark in four years, a new study by investment bank/consultancy Momentum Cyber said in its Cybersecurity Snapshot.

The month saw the acquisitions of Symantec’s Enterprise Assets by Broadcom for $10.7 billion & VMware’s buyout of Carbon Black for $2.1 billion.

Strategic deal volume in August spiked to 38 completed transactions (M&A + financing) totaling $13.3 billion in deal value. Of those, there were 16 M&A transactions valued at $12.9 billion and 22 financing deals worth $371 million in the month.

Here are M&A and financing deals for August 2019 highlights:

M&A activity.

  • 16 M&A deals were announced with disclosed values of $12.9 billion.
  • $13 billion enterprise value across top two M&A deals, involving public sellers.
  • Of the 16 M&A transactions in August, the most active sectors were four deals in security consulting, two in application security, two in endpoint security, and two in network security.

Financing activity.

  • Cybereason’s $200 million Series E funding led all financing rounds for August. Others included:
  • AU10TIX’s $60 million private equity deal.
  • Axonius’ $20 million Series B.
  • Securit.ai’s $18 million Series A.

Additional financing highlights:

  • 22 financing transactions completed with total capital raised of $371 million (median amount raised of $6 million).
  • 59% of total financing deals were Early Stage to Series A. Median amount raised in such deals was $3 million.
  • The most active financing sectors included: five in data security, four in risk & compliance, three in network security, and three in SecOps /IR/ threat intel.

On a 2019 year-to-date basis:

  • Financing activity totaled $5.8 billion in total volume in 290 transactions, for a 10 percent slide.
  • For the same period last year, YTD financing deal value was $6.4 billion.

Notable financing deals YTD include:

  • Cybereason raised $200 million.
  • OneTrust landed $200 million.
  • Cloudflare secured $150 million.

M&A deal value YTD totaled:

  • $19.8 billion in 113 transactions for a 23 percent.
  • In the same period last year, M&A value totaled $16.1 billion.

In addition to Symantec/Broadcom and VMware/Carbon Black, notable M&A deals among key players YTD include:

  • Jacobs acquired KeyW for $815 million.
  • Insight bought Recorded Future for $780 million.
  • Carbonite bought Webroot for $608.5 million.