Press Release
Stefanini, the global tech multinational, established in Brazil, extends its cybersecurity offering by opening a Security Operations Center to cover the needs of the company’s clients in EMEA. The center will be operated from Bucharest and it already employs a significant number of highly specialized cybersecurity experts, with the prospect of tripling its team by the end of the year.
Growth market cybersecurity outsourcing
Stefanini aims to expand its offering of cybersecurity services globally which is supposed to increase its share of total sales significantly over the next two years. As a provider of IT services for more than 33 years, in 41 countries around the globe, Stefanini entered the cybersecurity market in 2016, when it started a joint venture with Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The company leverages Rafael’s technology designed for military-grade cybersecurity and its own global sales channels. Stefanini Rafael Segurança e Defesa’s managed security services have grown rapidly in Brazil since the joint venture was announced. The company soon opened another SOC for Latin America.
EMEA region: growth via acquisitions and joint ventures
„If a few years ago, companies were spending a lot on cybersecurity products, lately, they are increasingly interested in cybersecurity outsourced services, performed by highly trained, specialized professionals. We observe that the pandemic added to the importance of this field”, says Farlei Kothe, CEO Stefanini EMEA. „So, despite the economic downturn we saw last year, some companies have doubled or even tripled their cybersecurity budget, especially due to increased remote work that comes with higher threats.”
Stefanini started to market its IT services portfolio in Europe in 2010. Thanks to the high level of technical education in Romania, the country became the company’s IT hub for Europe. The company employs some 2,500 people in Europe – 1,500 people in Romania who serve clients globally from the EMEA region. In 2020, Stefanini teamed up with the Romanian company Cyber Smart Defence, one of the most dynamic cybersecurity companies in the country, and the resulting joint venture is now planning to reach a turnover of up to 5 million euros in the next three years.
„At Stefanini Group, we are planning for a strong organic growth, doubled by a well-defined strategy of acquisitions and joint ventures in Europe and worldwide”, adds Farlei Kothe, Stefanini EMEA CEO. ”Our plan is to add at least two new ventures to our portfolio every year, and we will soon be announcing a new acquisition in Romania.”
Romanian IT hub with highly skilled technicians
The new SOC in Bucharest serves already several global companies established in Europe and has an ambitious growth plan of 120% increase year on year, while the market is estimated to expand by 12% in 2021.
„We are very confident that the level of skills and expertise we bring to the market is unrivalled, especially since we are closely working with our colleagues at the Stefanini – Rafael venture we have in Brazil, as well as with Cyber Smart Defence, the joint venture we established in Romania last autumn. We can provide 24/7/365 top-level services anywhere in the world, we can offer proof of concept to a client within days and we customize every single delivery and every project we offer our clients”, the CEO of Stefanini EMEA explains.
Another opportunity is that Bucharest will host the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre, the hub that distributes EU and national funding for cybersecurity research projects across the European member states.
Comprehensive cybersecurity portfolio for business customers
„The cybersecurity threats nowadays are unprecedented: one can become a hacker with less than one dollar invested on the dark web, and companies that have been hacked usually find out about this only hundreds of days after”, says Alex Bertea, Chief Cybersecurity Strategist, Stefanini EMEA. „We can deliver strategic, tactical and operational cybersecurity services, that are fully customizable, helping clients plan and execute their cybersecurity master plan and adapt their actions in an agile manner, making sure everything is fully aligned with their business objectives in the age of Digital Transformation.”
The company’s services in cybersecurity cover penetration testing – a relatively fast method to assess how easy it would be for an attacker to breach an IT infrastructure and find vulnerabilities that are currently affecting it, Threat Intelligence – a service that provides accurate and actionable information regarding cybersecurity threats (such as leaked assets identification, brand protection, indicators of compromise etc.) aimed to help clients anticipate and prevent security incidents, cybersecurity Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), DevSecOps application security, operational technology (OT & IoT) security or an integrated, complex set of services – the Managed Security Operations – Security Operations Center – that can provide consultancy for building and operating a private SOC, managed services to operate or complement an existing a SOC’s capabilities, or a fully managed service that offers clients access to cybersecurity incident monitoring and response capabilities, with the added benefits of rapid deployment, minimal infrastructure investments and flexible deployment models that can fit most companies’ budgets and security strategies.
