Telefónica beefs up its IoT security service with Nozomi investment

Spanish telecoms group Telefónica has a whole division devoted to managed security services and it reckons Nozomi Networks technology improves the IoT bit of it.

We don’t know how much cash Telefónica has dropped on Nozomi, but it was enough to warrant a press release and, presumably, to give it a stake in the company and therefore some degree of special access. On the other hand, the fact that there was no talk of acquisition certainly implies Telefónica has bought less than half.

“With this investment in Nozomi Networks we are reinforcing Telefónica’s commitment to cybersecurity in industrial environments and critical assets exposed to constant and ever-changing threats,” said Guenia Gawendo, director of Telefónica Innovation Ventures. “Monitoring and threat detection systems are highly important in helping to minimize these risks and in this field the artificial intelligence-based technology developed by Nozomi Networks is essential for our industrial customers.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for companies to improve the visibility of their assets and update their inventories, as they urgently obtain new devices and applications to enable the possibility of teleworking,” said Pedro Pablo Pérez, CEO of ElevenPaths, Telefónica Tech’s cybersecurity company.

“The support of Telefónica helps strengthen global awareness for Nozomi Networks technology,” said Edgard Capdevielle, CEO of Nozomi Networks. “Telefónica fully understands that it’s no longer enough simply to protect IT networks. It’s also essential to invest in detecting, monitoring and mitigating OT and IoT-related risks.”

Telefónica has a Byzantine corporate structure, so this move involved a collaboration between its VC and its supporting technology silos. The long and short of it is that Telefónica reckons it’s now better at offering managed IoT services, which are supposed to be the next big area of businesses for CSPs. Nozomi’s tech presumably plugs into the central management console in some way, as illustrated below.