Telefónica, through its venture capital arm Telefónica Innovation Ventures, has made an investment in cybersecurity company Nozomi Networks.
Telefónica's investment—the amount wasn't disclosed—added additional cybersecurity capabilities across industrial environments in the face of evolving threats to critical assets.
San Francisco, Calif.-based Nozomi Networks protects operational technology (OT) and IoT infrastructures across various verticals such as energy, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, logistics and the automotive industry. The investment came on the heels of a joint services agreement earlier this year between Nozomi and Telefónica's cybersecurity company, ElevenPaths.
Nozomi Networks, which was founded in 2013, supports more than 3.6 million devices in over 2,400 installations across manufacturing, mining, transportation, utilities, building automation, smart cities and critical infrastructure.
Nozomi's products can deployed onsite or in the cloud to help automate inventories and monitor industrial control networks by using artificial intelligence. In addition to cybersecurity, its use cases also include troubleshooting, asset management and predictive maintenance.
Over the next four years the ICS (industrial control systems) security market is expected to experience a 23% CAGR, according to Telefónica. Telefónica has beefed up ElvenPaths' security capabilities this year though additional partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
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Nozomi's partnership with ElevenPaths enables industrial infrastructure operators to gain more visibility into their networks while managing their security via a managed security service provider (MSSP) solution. The managed security service, which is available through ElevenPaths, uses Nozomi Networks' solution to provide risk management capabilities for industrial network and critical infrastructure customers.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for companies to improve the visibility of their assets and update their inventories, as they urgently obtain new devices and applications to enable the possibility of teleworking,” said ElevenPaths CO Pedro Pablo Pérez, in a statement.
Nozomi Networks’ total funding to date exceeds $54 million with additional investments from GGV Capital, Lux Capital, Energize Ventures and Planven Investments. The investment in Nozomi Networks expanded Telefónica Innovation Ventures’ portfolio of investments in 11 startups and technology partners.