Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (Singtel) is acquiring privately held security vendor Trustwave in a deal valued at $810 million.
Under the agreement, Singtel will acquire a 98 percent share of Trustwave, which has an enterprise value of $850 million. Trustwave Chairman, President and CEO Robert J. McCullen will retain the remaining 2 percent share.
Singtel expects the transaction to close in the next three to six months pending regulatory approvals. After the deal closes, Trustwave will operate as a stand-alone business unit of Singtel. The current Trustwave management team is expected to stay in place, and Trustwave’s headquarters will remain in Chicago.
Singtel is a leading communications group that provides multiple services, including both fixed and wireless voice and data. The group extends into 25 countries across Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe and the United States. According to Singtel, it has more than 500 million mobile customers globally today.
“Singtel is the perfect partner for us as we continue to help businesses fight cyber-crime, protect data and reduce security risk, and the Trustwave team is thrilled to become a part of such a prestigious and innovative organization,” McCullen said in a statement.
The deal will help Singtel establishing itself as a global security player.
“Our extensive customer reach and strong suite of ICT [information and communication technology] services, together with Trustwave’s deep cyber-security capabilities, will create a powerful combination and allow Singtel to capture global opportunities in the cyber-security space,” Chua Sock Koong, Singtel Group CEO, said in a statement.
Trustwave is active in multiple areas of cyber-security and has more than 1,200 employees based in 26 countries and currently operates global security operations centers (SOCs) in Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Manila and Warsaw.
Trustwave has managed security offerings as well as stand-alone products. In 2010, Trustwave acquired Breach Security, the primary commercial sponsor behind the widely deployed mod_security Web application firewall (WAF).
Also part of Trustwave is the SpiderLabs ethical hacking and threat research team, which has helped discover a number of important security threats in recent years. In August 2014, the U.S. Secret Service credited Trustwave with helping discover the backoff point-of-sale (POS) malware. Initially, the U.S Secret Service warned that 600 U.S. retailers had been impacted by backoff and later upped that number to more than 1,000 retailers.
Trustwave was also briefly embroiled in a legal claim about its involvement in helping secure retailer Target. Target was breached in December 2013, and in late March 2014, a pair of banks decided to take aim at Trustwave. The claim was quickly dropped in April, just days after the initial legal complaint was filed.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.