Orange Business beefs up cyberdefense capabilities with Atheos acquisition

Orange Business Services has acquired Atheos, a deal which will advance its standing in the European cyberdefense market segment.

Terms of the acquisition agreement were not revealed.

Atheos has mainly focused on providing IT identity and security management to enterprise customers in France. The company also works with its clients to define, implement and control their security strategies.

"This acquisition is part of our global strategy that's been in place for more than two years now," said Nicolas Furgé, Head of Security Services for Orange Business Services, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "We decided to expand in two areas that are critical: identity management and threat management." 

A key potential benefit of this acquisition is scale.

Orange can integrate Atheos' offerings into its larger network security business, which it offers out of its eight global Security Operations Centers (SOC).  

The service provider said the Atheos acquisition has two benefits: provisioning access control and data-loss prevention policies and providing proactive cyberdefense. The service provider's cyberdefense capabilities allow it to identify security breaches and vulnerabilities, detect and analyze "low-noise" attack signals and provide on-site crisis management.  

When it completes the acquisition, Atheos' capabilities will be housed under a new banner called Orange Cyberdefense.

For more:
- see the release

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Updated article on Jan. 7 with a quote from an Orange Business Services executive.