These days a big beautiful network is no use if isn’t secure. CIOs know it. The competition knows it. Criminals know it. And today, Verizon Business showed it knows it, too.
Verizon Business, the telecom’s IT solutions provider for large business and government customers, today announced it acquired Cybertrust, a privately held provider of global information security services. Financial terms were not disclosed . The companies expect to close the transaction in 60 to 90 days.
All of us recognize that security is a top concern for CIOs,” Verizon’s chief marketing officer for the business division, Nancy Gofus, said in a conference call.
Gofus said that Cybertrust’s identity management, managed security services, vulnerability/threat management and security certification programs closed the gaps in Verizon’s own security package.
In Cybertrust, Verizon purchased an an information security firm with 800 employees and operations in 30 locations across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. Beyond the services Gofus mentioned, Cybertrust also provides professional services including enterprise-wide quantified risk analysis, individual application assessments, and forensics and incident response services.
As a part of the buy, Verizon Business will also acquire ICSA Labs, an independent division of Cybertrust, which Verizon said has tested and certified 95 percent of the installed security products on the market today.
Verizon isn’t the first telecommunications and information services provider to recognize that services provided by security vendors might add more value to its business offerings.
In October 2006, telecommunications provider BT bought Counterpane Internet Security for an undisclosed sum. Counterpane manages networked security services for companies in retail, financial services and other markets where BT provides its services.
Network solutions provider IBM added its own security consulting services when it acquired Internet Security Services in a $1.3 billion all-cash last August. That followed EMC’s June 2006 acquisition of RSA Security for about $2.1 billion.
