Orange snaps up Swiss cybersecurity guards

French operator group Orange has acquired its way into the Swiss cybersecurity market.

Orange Cyberdefense revealed on Monday that last week it snapped up IT security specialist SCRT, and its IT solutions subsidiary, Telsys.

SCRT has been offering various security audit services, apps and training to Swiss companies for 20 years, while Telsys can trace its origins back even further. Interestingly, during the course of its 33-year history, Telsys was taken over by French IT firm Silicomp, which in 2006 was bought by none other than Orange. Telsys was later hived off again, and became an independent provider of cloud, networking and related managed services. That is until July 2020, when it was acquired by SCRT.

History has repeated itself, and now Telsys, having been bought by one company, has again been gobbled up by Orange.

So what does Orange get out of it? Well, given that – according to IDC – IT security spending in Europe is expected to reach nearly $47 billion this year and top $66 billion by 2026, quite a lot, potentially.

Orange Cyberdefense aims to grow its revenue to €1 billion by 2023. To that end, it has launched into or bought its way into nine European markets, which as of last week also includes Switzerland. In February 2019, it expanded its UK presence through the acquisition of SecureData. Later that same year, it did a similar deal in the Netherlands, buying SecureLink for €515 million. Orange Cyberdefense currently has 2,700 employees spread across 17 security operation centres (SOCs) and 13 CyberSOCs worldwide.

Acquiring SCRT and Telsys enables Orange Cyberdefense to offer local support to Swiss organisations on a 24/7 basis. Orange said the deal will also strengthen its European expertise when it comes to cyber threat intelligence and ethical hacking. Indeed, Orange said it plans to retain SCRT and Telsys’ management and staff, because it sees them as key to strengthening and accelerating its expansion plans.

In addition, Orange Business Services (OBS) is already present in Switzerland, with offices in Geneva and Zurich. The arrival of Orange Cyberdefense will doubtless bolster its credibility in the Swiss enterprise market.

“We are delighted with this acquisition and happy to welcome these new teams as they will strengthen all of our capabilities,” said Hugues Foulon, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense, in a statement. “This is another step forward in our goal to establish ourselves as the European leader in cybersecurity.”

“This operation will enable us to pursue our leadership project in Switzerland by relying on the size of Orange Cyberdefense, its portfolio of services and its operational model to better serve our national customers,” added Eric Delangle, chairman of SCRT and Telsys.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

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