BT bets big on cybersecurity with hiring blitz
Telco adds 300 security staff as it prepares to rehouse business under Global Services
BT is aggressively promoting its IT security capabilities to external customers for the first time following a staff recruitment push.
The telco has added 300 employees to its security arm over the past year, 200 of which are based in the UK, in recognition that cybersecurity has risen up the agenda both internally and among its customers.
BT will also move the unit in question - which it recently rebranded as BT Security Enterprise - into Global Services on 1 April to align it more closely with customers and sales staff.
Talking to CRN, Andy Talbot, director of global security operations at BT, said two developments had prompted the firm to bet big on the unit, which now has 2,000 staff and specialises in areas such as device management and cybersecurity services.
While the emergence of more complex threats has prompted BT to build a cyberdefence operation to protect its own organisation over the past two-and-a-half years, cybersecurity has also moved up the pecking order for C-level executives at BT's customers, Talbot explained.
"We've learned a lot about the people, processes and technology to enable us to protect ourselves against cyber attackers," he said.
"But security is also now one of the top three things people want to talk to us about, making it a great market opportunity for us. Before, if someone came to us and said ‘can you help us with our security', we would say yes, but we didn't necessarily proactively and aggressively look to grow that as much as we should have."
Recruitment push
The 200 new UK staff, a mix of external, internal and graduate recruits, propels BT's UK security headcount to 1,400. Non-UK headcount has risen by about 100 over the past 18 months to thanks in part to the recent opening of a second Indian network operations centre.
"We are growing our tentacles around the world," Talbot said. "This is a global operation with operation centres around the world."
Specialist IT security recruitment outfit Clipsham IT has been helping BT build up its security presence in the UK, Europe and the US over the past 12 months.
Founder Kay Bruen said: "BT has always been very successful at security without putting a focus on it. Now it is investing heavily in both people and back-office processes to proactively take market share from its major competition in the security market.
"It already has world-class SOCs it uses for supplying its own business and a huge security infrastructure on the support side. It makes sense to take that internal capability and extend it to its customer base."
BT Security Enterprise works with just 20 core vendors, including Check Point, Cisco and FireEye, Talbot says. Targeting primarily large enterprise customers, the unit will do battle with big SIs and telcos such as IBM, HP, Orange and AT&T as well as niche specialists such as Detica.
BT will take confidence from the fact it already provides security to about 500 global customers and ran the IT security for the London 2012 Olympic Games, Talbot added.
"You cannot run a network the size of ours without having great security and being part of the critical national infrastructure of the UK makes that even more important," he added.
Going global
For the past 12 months, BT Security Enterprise has sat as a standalone unit in the BT Group but from 1 April will move into Global Services, which feeds BT's top 1,600 customers.
"This is really quite important because it lines us up with the sales and client directors, gets us closer to our customers - as that's where all the customer ownership is - and also lines us up with the global customer services organisation," Talbot said.
"We have been in an incubator for a year learning how to operate as a standalone business and now we're moving into Global Services to fulfil the next stage of what we need to do."
According to Gartner, the global security technology and services market was on course to grow 8.7 per cent to $67.2bn (£40.3bn) in 2013, driven by increases in the complexity and volume of targeted attacks and compliance concerns.
Simon Church, chief executive of global security integrator NTT Com Security (pictured), said he had noticed not just BT but also the big auditors such as KPMG ramping up their cybersecurity presence to capitalise on this opportunity.
"Bluntly, I welcome the competition," he said. "It ratifies the market and also provides our clients with the opportunity to compare us with what else is out there."
David Hobson, security practice director at systems integrator MTI, agreed that BT is not alone in its quest for security glory.
"A lot of the major service providers to government are moving into the security space with a view to offering a premium-type service," he said. "But the number of customers prepared to pay that is finite. It will be interesting to see how BT packages and sells it."