Energias de Portugal (EDP), which ranks among Europe’s major electricity operators and is one of Portugal’s largest business groups, has completed a strategic investment in the Israel and US-based cybersecurity company, Sepio Systems. EDP is a vertically integrated utility company that has electricity, gas and renewable energy operations in 16 countries and EDP Renewables is the fourth wind power operator worldwide.
EDP is expanding partnerships in cybersecurity to further strengthen connectivity and resilience that are vital to the infrastructure, and advance new business opportunities. Over the last couple of years, attacks on critical infrastructure have surged and the potential repercussions are significant. A loss of data is concerning, but a loss of electricity is catastrophic to both businesses and society.
“Sepio’s approach to protecting enterprises against attacks arising from rogue devices is very creative and a well-executed idea in the cybersecurity space and we were even more impressed after experiencing it first-hand,” said Luis Manuel, Board Member at EDP Ventures. “The software provides granular visibility into our assets and best of all, allows us to define and enforce a security policy for hardware devices. We believe Sepio is well positioned to protect assets in both the IT and OT domains and we look forward to supporting Sepio Systems to help them grow further.”
Also participating in the investment is Mindset Ventures, an international Venture Capital firm that supports the growth and development of innovative companies that provide solutions to the relevant markets in Latin America and the existing investors – Pico Venture Partners and Founders Group.
The partnership with EDP will help Sepio Systems accelerate the development and deployment of Sepio’s Rogue Device Mitigation solution among utilities, financial institutes and large enterprises in Europe.
Sepio Prime is the world’s first end-to-end solution that offers comprehensive mitigation of hardware-based attacks, including rogue peripherals, invisible network devices and manipulated firmware. Sepio Prime has been successfully deployed in over 20 mid-sized to large banks, insurance and telecom companies in the US, Singapore, Brazil and Israel. The current install base secures over 600,000 workstations and network ports.
“The massive cyberattacks and data breaches we see lately are due not just to the rise of cybercrime, but also to the ease of getting hold of attack tools that were accessible to governments and intelligence organisations until only few years ago,” said Iftah Bratspiess, CEO of Sepio Systems. “We founded Sepio to help organisations address the rapidly growing threat of malicious hardware devices. By applying deep intelligence and hardware fingerprinting technology we can instantly and accurately detect and identify manipulated peripherals and network devices.”
Bratspiess added: “Having a top global vertically integrated utility such as EDP invest directly in Sepio is not only a vote of confidence in the company, but a testament to the significant risk organisations see in the uncontrolled use of hardware devices. In addition, the support and network of Mindset Ventures provides a huge leap forward in successfully engaging with top tier companies in Brazil. The new funding will fuel our technology roadmap as well as the expansion into new verticals and territories.”
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