Thales continues cyber shopping spree with €100M OneWelcome acquisition

The latest purchase in the cybersecurity and identity sector for Thales is Netherlands-based OneWelcome which specializes in cloud-based identity services for highly regulated industries. Gaining OneWorld’s digital identity lifecycle management capabilities, Thales considers the acquisition, totaling €100 million (US$100.6 million), as the step that makes its own identity platform the most comprehensive on the market.

OneWelcome described itself as the largest customer identity and access management (CIAM) software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions vendor in Europe and itself the result of the July 2021 merger of Dutch companies Onegini and iWelcome. It creates secure and private connections between a client and its customers and business partners through digital ID.

It boasts a hundred clients such as the European Central Bank and Admiral Insurance. OneWelcome is certified by the Dutch government for the upcoming eIDAS regulation. It is experiencing 30 percent year-on-year growth according to the acquisition announcement.

“Customer Identity – or CIAM – is a solution tailored for any organisation with a digital presence that need to securely manage external identities and provide intuitive access to their online services,” says Danny de Vreeze, CEO of OneWelcome, commenting on the deal.

“We have a state-of-the-art service that is used by European customers to connect and protect millions of users. Our highly motivated team is thrilled to expand our product leadership into new markets using the global reach of Thales.”

Philippe Vallée, executive vice-president, Digital Identity and Security at Thales comments: “OneWelcome’s talents and expertise in customer identity and access management complements and strengthens our authentication and data privacy portfolio as well as our plan to provide a trusted and frictionless digital experience.”

Thales’s digital identity division helped the group notch up a bumper financial year. The firm recently acquired two other cybersecurity firms, S21sec and Excellium.

“Nowadays, as we see a rapid increase in amount of data, cloud migrations, and new compliance mandates, it’s essential to offer secure, adaptive and convenient solutions that help our customers in both private and public sectors to classify, protect, and control the access to their sensitive data regardless of where it resides,” adds Vallée on the OneWelcome purchase.

The deal is expected to be completed later in the year. OneWorld’s hundred plus headcount and 550 from S21sec and Excellium, if all retained, look to help Thales in its aim to recruit a thousand new employees in cybersecurity as part of the overall goal to hire 11,000 people worldwide in 2022.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  cybersecurity  |  digital identity  |  identity access management (IAM)  |  OneWelcome  |  Thales Digital Identity and Security