American telecommunications giant AT&T has announced the launch of LevelBlue, a joint venture funded by WillJam Ventures and its renamed cyber security unit. The announcement was made at the RSA security conference which is taking place in San Francisco this week.
A statement from AT&T on Monday said LevelBlue would offer customers "strategic cyber-security services to meet businesses’ evolving needs, including managed security services, experienced consulting, threat intelligence, research, and ongoing security operations centre support".
It said LevelBlue would include more than 1000 employees, with AT&T retaining a minority ownership stake and board representation in the new entity.
“Today’s rapidly evolving cyber security landscape requires organisations to leverage expert resources for continuous protection against emerging threats," commented Bob McCullen, chairman and chief executive of LevelBlue and managing partner of WillJam Ventures.
{loadposition sam08}"LevelBlue’s advanced cyber security capabilities, our co-investment with AT&T and our ability to innovate will serve our customers and the industry well now and in the future,” he said.
“LevelBlue’s comprehensive technology and service portfolio simplifies cyber security for the businesses that fuel our global economy. With cyber threats making headlines daily and impacting businesses of all types and sizes, LevelBlue’s experienced team and always-on services make governance, planning, resource allocation, and innovation easier than ever – without sacrificing security.”
Rick Welday, executive vice-president of AT&T Enterprise Markets, added: "Today marks a significant milestone as we officially launch LevelBlue, our standalone managed security services joint venture.
“As we continue to embed more security capabilities into our core network, this venture simultaneously allows us to stay one step ahead of evolving cyber threats and foster innovation in the cyber security space.
"We look forward to the opportunities and capabilities LevelBlue brings to the market."
LevelBlue released its first security report, the 2024 Futures Report: Beyond the Barriers to Cyber Resilience, on Tuesday.
The report found that 85% of participants surveyed believed computing innovation was increasing risk. Additionally, 74% of global respondents confirmed that the opportunity of computing innovation outweighed the corresponding increase in cyber security risk - making cyber resilience nearly impossible to achieve.
"In fact, less than half (47%) of survey respondents declared their cybersecurity processes as standardized, with only 35% having formalised incident response," it said.
“Businesses are less resilient than they should be, despite multiple high-profile cyber-attacks and the knowledge that, for most, any widespread interruption to computing would be catastrophic,” said Theresa Lanowitz, chief evangelist of AT&T Cybersecurity / LevelBlue.
“Our research shows that despite the potential for cyber security to support safer innovation — and therefore drive better outcomes — most respondents admit their cyber security is siloed or an afterthought.
"By recognising cyber security as a core business function and adopting a proactive stance on risk management, businesses can quickly and confidently navigate the intricacies of dynamic, boundary-less computing.”
Additional key findings:
- "Cyber resilience requires C-suite and board support, yet 63% of respondents say leadership doesn’t prioritise cyber resilience, and 72% admit their governance team doesn’t understand it;
- "Fifty-six percent have limited visibility of the IT estate, with 72% believing digital transformation is an ongoing barrier to cyber security resilience;
- "The adoption of cybersecurity-as-a-service is on the rise, with 32% of organisations opting to outsource their cyber security needs rather than managing them in-house;
- "Four in 10 recognise distributed denial-of-service as a probable attack vector, but another 40% of respondents admit to lacking confidence in handling it; and
- "Forty-two percent express hesitancy regarding their capacity to manage nation-state cyber attacks, recognising the potential to disrupt critical infrastructure, sow public distrust, and channel espionage exploits."