With the number and impact of cyber attacks continuing to increase rapidly, BT has announced a multi-million pound investment in Safe Security, a cyber risk management firm. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the firm’s SAFE (Security Assessment Framework for Enterprises) platform allows organisations to take a health check of their existing defences and understand their likelihood of suffering a major cyber attack.

Industry analysis estimates that the cost of global cyber crime reached over $1 trillion in 2020, as criminals exploited seismic changes in everyday life to target both individuals and organisations of all sizes. With high-profile recent incidents impacting critical areas such as energy infrastructure and medical care, businesses and governments are under huge pressure to objectively assess how protected they are against the latest forms of cyber attack.

The investment will allow BT to combine the SAFE platform with its managed security services to provide customers with a real time view of how safe they are against an incredibly fast-moving cyber threat landscape. SAFE is unique in calculating a financial cost to customers’ risks and giving actionable insight on the steps that can be taken to address them. The platform ultimately enables organisations to surgically target gaps in their defences, and already protects multiple Fortune 500 companies and governments around the world.

Philip Jansen, the CE of BT, said: “Cyber security is now at the top of the agenda for businesses and governments, who need to be able to trust that they’re protected against increasing levels of attack. Adding SAFE to BT’s proactive, predictive security services will give customers an enhanced view of their threat level, and rapidly pinpoint specific actions needed to strengthen their defences. Already one of the world’s leading providers in a highly fragmented security market, this investment is a clear sign of BT’s ambition to grow further.”

Saket Modi, Co-founder and CEO of Safe Security, said: “We’re delighted to be working with a proven global security leader in BT. Their investment and strategic partnership with Safe Security will further accelerate our vision of making SAFE scores the industry standard for measuring and mitigating cyber risks. By aligning BT’s global reach and capabilities with SAFE’s ability to provide real-time visibility on cyber risk posture, we are going to fundamentally change how cyber security is measured and managed across the globe.”

As part of this investment, BT will be granted exclusive rights to use and sell SAFE to businesses and public sector bodies in the UK, and will incorporate the platform within its wider global portfolio. In recognition of its experience in providing security solutions to organisations across the world, BT will be designated as the recommended global partner for improving a customer’s SAFE score. BT will also work collaboratively with Safe Security to develop future products.

BT Group is the UK’s main telecoms and network provider and a major provider of global communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities in the UK include the provision of fixed voice, mobile, broadband and TV (including Sport) and a range of products and services over converged fixed and mobile networks to consumer, business and public sector customers. For its global customers, BT provides managed services, security and network and IT infrastructure services to support their operations all over the world. BT consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Openreach, which provides access network services to over 650 communications provider customers who sell phone, broadband and Ethernet services to homes and businesses across the UK. For the year ended 31 March 2021, BT Group’s reported revenue was £21,331 million with reported profit before tax of £1,804 million.

British Telecommunications is a subsidiary of BT Group and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.

Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Safe Security is a leader in the “Cyber security and Digital Business Risk Quantification” (CRQ) space. It helps organizations measure and mitigate enterprise-wide cyber risk in real-time using its ML Enabled API-First SAFE Platform by aggregating automated signals across people, process, and technology, both for first & third party to dynamically predict the breach likelihood (SAFE Score) & dollar risk of an organization.

The SAFE scoring model is built as joint research at MIT that incorporates cyber security sensors data, external threat intelligence, and business context and places it together in a Bayesian Network of a Supervised Machine Learning scoring engine to give out scores and dollar value risk that the organization faces. The scores are calculated both at a macro and micro level and can also be measured for particular Lines of Business / Crown Jewels / Departments.

The SAFE Scores will enable the organization to have a “common language” across teams, from the board all the way down to an analyst to be aligned with a consistent risk metric along with justifying investments in cyber security and purchase of cyber insurance for the organization.