The picture above, from BigStockPhotos, shows an artistic rendering of solar flares for a post about a company called "SolarWinds"
SolarWinds is in the news for a recent cyber-attack which affected many US Government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
There are many technical analyses online like the one by Lawrence Systems shown below that discuss the attack from a technical perspective.
I've been studying the merger chains that dominate the financial world. I believe that the way we finance modern corporations is partly to blame for the security breach.
So, I created a timeline of SolarWinds' merger chain on my site.
The company was founded by executives from WalMart. These executives collaborated with Bain Company. Bain preaches the idea that companies must dominate their market segment or perish. SolarWinds was then acquired by Bain Capital.
Bain Capital is the group behind company behind companies that had spectacular growth spurts like Toys-R-US, The Sports Authority, KB Toys, Gymboree, etc.
SolarWinds held an IPO and was on the market briefly before being acquired by SilverLake Capital. SilverLake accelerated the acquisition process and held a second IPO. The current company trades on the NYSE with the symbol SWI. Yahoo Finance showed the company had a market value of $7 billion with over $2 billion in debt. Their revenue was about a billion a year with a net income of $38 million.
SolarWinds stock is flaring out. My guess is the company will hold a bankruptcy and will be re-acquired by a private equity firm which will merge SolarWinds into another big tech portfolio.
The company was started by big business. It grew through big finance and big government connections. I did not find a page with complete details of its merger chain. I found mentions of 21 mergers in press releases with hints that the marger chain was much larger.
In my research of the company I saw nothing which indicated that the company was held together by any sort of deep vision.
It appears that the company was simply pieced together by large banks that believed they could reduce security to a commodity.
As the banks had money and political connections SolarWinds was able to buy the trust of the US government and Fortune 500 firms.
While big finance is a great way to concentrate power. I believe it is a terrible way to run business. This video talks about the hack.
Anyway, SolarWinds provides software management and cyber-security services with the SaaS model (software as as service). Their products were trusted to run the computer updates for big firms and the US government. A group (most likely a Russian Hacking group called Cozy Bear) managed to compromise the updating software and were able to inject spyware into numerous government systems.
One stack to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.