Asian telco giant buys US cyber firm

The rush to cash in on the cybersecurity industry boom spending is spreading to Asia.

Singtel, Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications firm by revenue, announced Wednesday it had purchased Chicago-based Trustwave, a security firm with more than 3 million customers worldwide, for $810 million.

“We aspire to be a global player in cybersecurity,” said Singtel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong.

{mosads}The security services industry, in which third parties manage an IT system, is exploding. According technology research firm Gartner, the market will hit $24 billion by 2018, up 75 percent from 2014.

Major companies around the world have been angling to get into the industry while it’s taking off.

Just last month, Paypal purchased Israeli security firm CyActive, which predicts what malware hackers will next invent. Last year, Lockheed Martin bought Industrial Defender, which helps protect critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. And in 2013, Cisco Systems made a big splash when it bought U.S.-based security firm Sourcefire for $2.7 billion.

Demand for cybersecurity products has grown rapidly as major retailers, banks and health insurers have all been hit by digital attacks, compromising hundreds of millions of Americans’ sensitive data.

Trustwave offers helps companies protect against such hacks, offering products that scan databases and identify a company’s cyber risks.