Vendor lineage
Cipher - the other one that was bought
A large Brazilian security firm acquired by a physical-security multinational, two years before the same thing happened to its rival.
Cipher was one of Brazil's larger cybersecurity companies until 2018, when Prosegur - a private-security multinational with more than 175,000 employees across 25 countries - signed an agreement for a majority stake.
Read beside the Tempest entry it makes a point neither makes alone. Within roughly two years, the two largest Brazilian specialist security firms were both bought by companies from outside the technology industry: one by an aircraft manufacturer, the other by a physical-security operator.
Both acquirers were buying the same thing - a digital capability they could not build at the speed their existing customers were asking for it. That is a specific market condition rather than a coincidence, and it is why the period saw so little Brazilian security consolidation between Brazilian technology companies.
- Baguete, 1 July 2020 - notes that in 2018 Prosegur, a private-security company with more than 175,000 staff in 25 countries, signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Cipher
Cipher appears here as reported context inside an article about Tempest, which is how the two Brazilian security acquisitions of that period are usually recorded together.
- Cipher, now Prosegur’s cybersecurity division - an industry directory records the company as founded in 2000, and Cipher’s own about page states more than twenty years of operation with over 200 cybersecurity professionals across five countries and six security operations centres
The 2000 date comes from a directory listing; Cipher’s own site corroborates the period with a statement of more than twenty years but does not print a year. Recorded on the two together rather than on either alone.