Spain-based financial services company BBVA has selected telco-countrymate Telefónica to run artificial intelligence (AI) and process automation into its global cybersecurity operations. It is working with Telefónica Tech, the digital services arm of the Madrid-based telecoms group, to “boost” its cybersecurity regime on a global scale, including with the “most advanced technologies”, and also to create a digital twin at a new facility in Mexico of the banking group’s existing cybersecurity centre in Spain.
Telefónica Tech stated: “The combination of the two will provide comprehensive and uninterrupted coverage for the entire group… [BBVA] will incorporate the latest [tech] advances… to detect, identify, and respond to potential threats, as well as to monitor the activity of cyber-attackers.” It said its solution comprises “almost 50 services” to provide a “holistic security response to each operational and business element of the bank”. These include operational tactics and threat modelling, and a focus on resiliency and protection of its data processing centres (DPCs).
The new centre in Mexico will be fully operational this month (July). It will cover BBVA’s activities in the Americas, and work in tandem with its cybersecurity centre in Spain. Telefónica Tech is supplying around 200 cybersecurity staff to the two sites, providing protection of digital customers in the more than 25 countries. Their joint operation, together with the BBVA team, creates “one of the largest cybersecurity centres in the financial industry”, it said. In one go, Telefónica Tech has become one of BBVA’s main cybersecurity partners, it said.
Sergio Fidalgo, chief information and security officer at BBVA, said: “These two hubs specialising in cybersecurity are unique in the financial industry and represent a new step towards protecting our infrastructures with the latest technological advances. Our goal is to be a bank that is increasingly secure and prepared to respond to all types of attacks and to offer the best service to our customers with the best security guarantees in the market.”
María Jesús Almazor, chief operating officer at Telefónica Tech, said: “It is a pleasure to accompany BBVA in this process of global security with our technological capabilities and the talent of our professionals, who are backed by a global network of more than 1,500 experts in cybersecurity operations and more than ten security operations centres (SOCs) across Europe and the Americas to monitor and oversee the security of organisations 24×7.”
