Trustwave Sells PCI Compliance Business To Sysnet For $80M

‘It didn’t necessarily make sense for us to stay in the PCI business. This will allow us to invest more and focus more on the MDR and MSS assets going forward,’ Trustwave CEO Eric Harmon tells CRN.

Trustwave has sold its legacy payment card industry compliance business to Sysnet Global Solutions for $80 million to double down on managed detection and response (MDR).

The Chicago-based cybersecurity company said divesting its longstanding SecureTrust and FLEX divisions will allow Trustwave to focus more on the high-growth managed security services (MSS) portfolio the company has built out over the past half-decade, said CEO Eric Harmon. Trustwave is part of Singapore telecom conglomerate Singtel, which initiated a strategic review of its digital businesses in May.

“It didn’t necessarily make sense for us to stay in the PCI business,” Harmon told CRN. “This will allow us to invest more and focus more on the MDR and MSS assets going forward.”

[Related: Trustwave Allows Partners To Resell Services For The First Time]

Trustwave plans to use the proceeds from the sale of SecureTrust to invest more in artificial intelligence and machine learning to add more context around alerts in an automated fashion, Harmon said. The company also intends to enhance its Fusion unified security platform by adding API integrations and data feeds to make it easier to work with third-party tools, according to Harmon.

The divestiture will position Trustwave to compete directly against IBM Security and Accenture globally as well as Secureworks primarily in North America, according to Harmon. Accenture got into the managed security space through its April 2020 acquisition Symantec’s Cyber Security Services business from Broadcom for a reported $200 million.

The artificial intelligence and machine learning investments are expected to improve Trustwave’s speed and accuracy as predicting threats, its ability to prioritize threats appropriate, and its ability to automate the response process, according to Harmon. The categorization process is largely automated today, but there’s opportunity to automate more of the immediate response and the culling process for threats.

“We’re doing a better job of picking up the patterns, enriching the patterns with our proprietary data and techniques, and enriching the data itself,” Harmon said. “The further that we can refine the automation and the tooling, the better it becomes.”

From a third-party tooling perspective, Harmon said more API integrations and data feeds will make it easier for Trustwave to work with customers on setting alerts, rules and filters on products they’ve already bought. This will allow clients to respond faster and more efficiently to any threats they’re facing, according to Harmon.

More advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning will create better overall threat protection and filtering for Trustwave’s customer base, Harmon said. Improvements in the company’s proprietary analytics should make it possible for customers to eliminate false positives and react to high fidelity alerts more quickly, according to Harmon.

Trustwave is focused on enhancing its operational effectiveness and efficiency by boosting the number of threats it stops, the speed at which it responds to those threats, and its effectiveness at eliminating false positives, according to Harmon. Stronger operations should drive continued rapid revenue growth in both the managed security services and managed detection and response spaces, Harmon said.

“It’s really about market evolution and focus for us,” Harmon said. “As the market evolved, we have shifted our focus to MDR, MSS and more advanced consulting work.”

As far as the channel is concerned, Harmon said Trustwave plans to use proceeds from the sale to create highly standardized offerings that are easier for partners to resell. Through investments in deal registration, training, enablement and technology, Harmon said Trustwave wants to simplify the process for solution providers looking to work with the company.

Trustwave primarily sells direct today, and often leverages direct relationships to serve enterprise customers while tapping solution providers to reach the mid-market, according to Harmon. The company has just under 600 channel partners globally and hired former Ivanti and LogRhythm channel leader Gary Abad this month to serve as global channel chief, Harmon said.

“We want to continue working with our partners to be more channel-friendly,” Harmon said.