Tata Communications will hire 400 people and invest $50 million in its cybersecurity services business in the next three years, a top official said.
“Our revenues from the security business are growing more than 50% year-on-year and we expect this growth to continue,” said Srinivasan C.R., senior vice president, Global Product Management & Data, Tata Communications. “We are looking to invest $50 million globally in the next three years to enhance our security capabilities.”
In the last 12 months, the firm has been focusing on security related to cloud technologies. It is also focusing on associated risk and compliance, as companies look to combat rising cybercrime and data theft.
‘Analytics opportunity’
“We are gradually establishing a global presence that provides customers advanced insights on cybersecurity threats. We will also focus on identity and access management and cloud security, which are some chief areas that require attention in the near future. We are looking at security around analytics, as well,” he said.
Tata Communications now has a team of more than 100 cybersecurity experts, of which about 80 are in India with a large portion of this talent in Chennai. A large chunk of its security services customers are from the BFSI segment.
According to him, the company has more than 300 client engagements for security services business. It has a security operations centre (SOC), titled the cyberesponse centre, in Chennai. The firm is also expanding its SOC footprint with a focus on the Singapore, West Asia, the U.S. and the U.K. to help customers handle their security infrastructure.
“We think the base of our customers will grow significantly in the next few quarters and we’re preparing ourselves such that we are able to address the spike in demand that we expect to see. A lot of these are also driven by regulations,” he said.
“We are committed to cybersecurity skill development and talent development. We are working with universities in Tamil Nadu and Singapore to help students learn about cybersecurity as part of their education curriculum in order to help create a specialist workforce for the future.” he said.
“Our vision for 2020 is definitely to be a globally recognised managed security services provider (MSSP), with capabilities that are absolutely global, and can get as local as required,” Mr. Srinivasan said.
The global market size for cybersecurity is more than $100 billion and for security services about $30 billion, he said.
“The market is growing exponentially. There is room for everybody. We are a very nascent industry. Technology components are evolving rapidly and more and more trends and solutions are emerging. So, as the market grows, we will grow as well. We have seen this business double for us every two years. We expect the trend to continue going forward,” he said.
