Telefonica Digital forms new security division aimed at cloud, mobility
Telefonica has announced the creation of a new security company — called Eleven Paths — within its Digital division that will be given the task of improving security innovation at the Spanish tech giant.
Eleven Paths will primarily be run by formers workers of Informatica 64, a Spanish security company acquired by Telefonica. Informatica 64's founder and CEO Chema Alonso will lead Eleven Paths.
He said that his role, and that of Eleven Paths, would be to radically change the way companies provided security services to customers and big corporations.
"The digital world is changing the rules and security services need to adapt to this new challenge very fast," Alonso said.
It seems as though the company will be left to its own devices — Telefonica Digital said the company would be run as a startup unit within the larger organisation.
Telefonica Digital hopes this approach will provide Eleven Paths with the agility and flexibility it needs to be able to bring new security products to the market quickly.
The company's initial focus will be on securing data in the enterprise from threats connected to mobility, cloud computing and social networking. The increased use of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise would be a particularly strong focus area, Telefonica Digital said in a blogpost.
Alonso said Eleven Paths would bring a penetration testing (pentesting) kit to the market early on as well. This method of security testing looks for vulnerabilities in a company’s defences by simulating what hackers would do to get into the systems. Informatica 64 had previously developed the pentesting kit FOCA.
"Security must be a key pillar of internet and services architecture from the beginning," Alonso said. "Pentesting by design is one of the trends companies should be adopting in the near future."
Telefonica Digital CEO Matthew Key said: "As more and more data is held and accessed in the cloud and through an ever increasing number of devices, the integrity of this data is critical as threats become more sophisticated. In Chema and his team, we have world leaders in information security who bring the necessary skills in this area to reflect the nature of the market and bring the right solutions to our customers."