August 13, 2021 - Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory recently acquired industrial cybersecurity business aeCyberSolutions, marking Deloitte’s fifth cyber acquisition of 2021. “We have very exciting growth plans in place,” said Wendy Frank, Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory Cyber 5G and IoT leader and principal. “Especially when it comes to emerging tech areas, almost everything is cyber-related. This acquisition is a prime way for us to increase our knowledge and skill sets in that area.”
The acquisition of aeCyberSolutions benefits Deloitte in two key areas: access to aeCyberSolutions’ well-tested frameworks and methodologies to bolster Deloitte’s cybersecurity offerings, as well as the addition of an experienced, senior team with deep technical skills in industrial control systems, particularly the OT area. “[The aeCyberSolutions team] has experience in oil and gas, power and utilities, energy and resources, industrial gases, pulp and paper, and smart manufacturing,” Frank said. “There’s such a limited number of people who have worked in those industries in the smart manufacturing and OT space.” In particular, Frank emphasized the value of the increased knowledge about IoT and OT.
“More people are working remotely because of the COVID-19, causing the area of smart manufacturing to expand even more. Securing spaces in the industries I mentioned is very important. AeSolutions brings a very experienced and senior team with deep technical skills.” John Cusimano, vice president of industrial cybersecurity for aeSolutions and incoming Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory managing director, Deloitte & Touche LLP, added, “Since 2014, our cyber services and solutions have helped industrial sector organizations meet their most pressing ICS/OT cybersecurity needs by providing corporate and plant-level assessments, remediation recommendations, program frameworks, and training.
Joining Deloitte will enable us to scale the depth and breadth of our services, increasing our ability to help clients build more trustworthy, resilient and secure environments.” aeSolutions also brings to the table a robust set of frameworks and methodologies. “We will take the great tools they’ve built and expand and industrialize them to better serve our collective clients,” Frank said. aeSolutions ’ remaining businesses–such as its engineering business unit–were not included in the transaction.
Earlier this year, Deloitte acquired the assets of cyber threat hunting provider Root9B, LLC (R9B) , cloud security posture management (CSPM) provider CloudQuest, Inc. , digital risk protection company, Terbium Labs , and Zero Trust network access (ZTNA) provider TransientX .
