Thales is continuing to grow its cybersecurity business, with the acquisition of Netherlands-based Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) firm OneWelcome for €100 million.
The vendor says OneWelcome’s digital identity lifecycle management capabilities will complement Thales’s existing identity services such as secure credential enrollment, issuance and management and Know Your Customer (KYC).
OneWelcome provides cloud-based customer identity and access management for highly regulated industries, enabling them to securely connect customers and business partners to their online services. Lighthouse customers include Malakoff Humanis, PostNL and the European Central Bank. Thales says it plans to leverage this regional expertise to address the global need for enhanced identity and data privacy management.
The OneWelcome business will particularly address the increasing need for convenient and secure access, as well as data privacy in regulated markets, subject to GDPR compliance for instance. One part of OneWelcome’s expertise is to grant users a greater control of their information and data, across any platform or application as it helps manage their passwords and consent preferences.
Cybersecurity growth plans
In 2022, Thales plans to hire 11,000 people worldwide, including 1,000 in cybersecurity. This latest acquisition follows Thales’ acquisition of cybersecurity companies, S21sec and Excellium in May.
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With the OneWelcome acquisition, Thales says it will offer a comprehensive identity platform that will allow organisations to manage internal and external identities,” enabling them to bring new businesses online fast, improving operational efficiency and customer experience along the way, while meeting or exceeding regulatory compliance.”
With 100+ employees and customers across Europe, OneWelcome is experiencing strong growth of over 30 percent year-on-year. OneWelcome will join Thales Digital Identity and Security global business unit. Gartner predicts that by 20232, 72 percent of organisations will be rolling out a CIAM initiative, versus 40 percent in 2020.
“Customer Identity – or CIAM – is a solution tailored for any organisation with a digital presence that need to securely manage external identities and provide intuitive access to their online services,” said Danny de Vreeze CEO of OneWelcome. “We have a state-of-the-art service that is used by European customers to connect and protect millions of users. Our highly motivated team is thrilled to expand our product leadership into new markets using the global reach of Thales.”
“The acquisition of OneWelcome is fully aligned with our expansion strategy within the cybersecurity space,” added Philippe Vallée, EVP, digital identity and security at Thales. “OneWelcome’s talents and expertise in customer identity and access management complements and strengthens our authentication and data privacy portfolio as well as our plan to provide a trusted and frictionless digital experience. Nowadays, as we see a rapid increase in amount of data, cloud migrations, and new compliance mandates, it’s essential to offer secure, adaptive and convenient solutions that help our customers in both private and public sector to classify, protect, and control the access to their sensitive data regardless of where it resides.”
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions and is expected to be completed during the second half of 2022.
