The finalization this week of the US$810 million purchase of security vendor Trustwave by Asian provider Singtel Telecommunications means the Chicago-based company is on an expansion binge here as well as around the world to grow its managed security services.
“We’re hiring like mad in all our geographies, including Canada,” Steve Kelley, senior vice-president of product and corporate marketing, said in an interview Wednesday.
Trustwave opened a security operations centre last month in Kitchener-Waterloo area for its managed security services, bringing to 58 the number of engineering staff and sales here. It is looking to hire another 25 including security operations analysts and software engineers.
Trustwave will continue to operate as a separate division of the Singapore-based telco.
The deal offers a number of advantages that CISOs and telecom managers should consider, Kelley argued. Singtel is one of the largest telecom providers in Asia-Pacific region, as well as telecom partners in Australia and India. Any Canadian organization looking for combination of telecomm services and security for departments outside of here now have a vendor they can go to get both. Trustwave already has some 600 customers here, mainly helping enterprises meet the payment card security standards.
For example, Kelley said, a Canadian-based international hospitality firm he wouldn’t name already uses Trustwave for managed security services would be the kind of firm that would be pitched to add secure global telecom connectivity.
The K-W security operations centre is one of six Trustwave has around the world, including three in the U.S., one in Poland and one is Manila. The acquistion adds Singtel’s SOC in Singapore and one planned in Australia.
In a statement the company said Singtel brings a wealth of data from its “massive” Asia Pacific network backbone and SOC that will feed additional threat intelligence into Trustwave’s managed security services. Trustwave says it has more than three million business subscribers in 96 countries. Singtel Group employs more than 23,000 staff worldwide.
For the fiscal year ending March 31 Singtel Group had revenue of about CDN$16.1 billion and net profit of about $3.4 billion.
According to Brent Davidson, vice-president of sales for Canada, the centre will offer services including threat monitoring and device management.
It was opened to support what Trustwave sees as a growing market for managed security services here. In addition, some existing customers are sensitive about data sovereignty so want a provider based in Canada.
The technical talent in the Kitchener-Waterloo area is very strong, he added, giving the company access to a pool of potential employees.