IT Solutions Firm Telsy Partners with Forcepoint To Safeguard Enterprise Customers in the Cloud

Telsy got its start providing secure military communications to the Italian government in 1971. Today, the subsidiary of Telecom Italia also provides enterprise-class cybersecurity solutions to some of Italy’s largest private companies charged with protecting critical infrastructure and other high-level assets, data, and IP. Telsy chose to partner with Forcepoint to provide data protection and cloud security to its customers, citing both the quality of Forcepoint’s DLP, CASB and NGFW solutions and the collaborative nature of  the partnership.

Telsy, a subsidiary of Telecom Italia, provides products and services for securing information and communications to large private and public sector customers. Founded in 1971 in Turin, Italy, Telsy’s first product was an encoder based on band inversion for mobile radios, and it quickly grew into a leading developer of secure products for military communications. In the 2000s, Telsy developed a line of secure VoIP telephone terminals, and was subsequently acquired by Telecom Italia, the largest telecommunications services provider in Italy.

While Telsy still works closely with government and the military, in recent years, the company has expanded its system integration business to the private sector, providing data protection, network security and cloud security to enterprise customers. With its own reputation for best-in-class cybersecurity on the line, Telsy partners  with Forcepoint to deliver Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), and Forcepoint Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions to a customer base that includes large defense contractors, manufacturers, telecommunications firms, and more.

Partners in the cloud

Telsy’s partnership with Forcepoint has quickly seen results. The system integrator achieved Platinum Partner status with Forcepoint in just months, moving aggressively to achieve Forcepoint certification on key products and closing multiple deals for DLP and CASB installations. A key part of the success story has been Forcepoint’s cloud security portfolio and how it aligns with Telsy customers’ evolving cybersecurity needs, said Fernando Di Luca, Senior Executive, Telsy. 

“Partnering with Forcepoint, we can assist our customers as they move to the cloud. It’s a major step and evolution for ourcustomers, and products like CASB help make their digital transformations secure and safe for their business. A typical customer on a path to the cloud will start with Office 365, Salesforce, Google products, NetSuite ERP, for example—Forcepoint CASB protection makes them a lot more comfortable using those cloud applications,”  
he said.

One big differentiator for Forcepoint CASB compared with competitors’ products is application coverage, Di Luca said.  While some CASB products require additional fees to add  
cloud applications or simply can’t secure them, Forcepoint’s solution includes more than a dozen apps for the price of just a single license.

An adaptable, responsive SOC

Telsy provides services with its own best-in-class VoIP security and encryption offerings and by partnering with Forcepoint and other cybersecurity vendors. The company runs its own Security Operations Center (SOC) with about 20 security analysts using best-in-class tools and their own expertise to keep customers  and their data safe.

Telsy’s customers include some of Italy’s largest critical infrastructure companies and the Italian government itself, meaning they are targets for not just cybercriminals but state actors as well. These customers must be secured against the most sophisticated, evolving cyberthreats to prevent data breaches that could result in major monetary losses and reputational damage. Enterprise-grade network security products are still needed in critical environments, so Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) have been deployed as well. 

One major area where Telsy has been able to assist its customers in recent months has been with safer web communication tools for remote workers during the pandemic. For example, the solution provider has helped customers install more secure, enterprise-class videoconferencing apps to replace consumer products, as well as providing true visibility into remote worker cloud usage via Forcepoint CASB.

“One new situation our customers are facing is how to cope with the fact that so many people are now working from home, and  they must still be able to have access to data in the company,”  Di Luca said.

“This means we must help them add more layers of protection, including DLP and CASB to secure who is accessing data and how,” Di Luca said. “We are also helping increase control over the connections that employees are using, increasing VPN capacity, and getting visibility into the remote WiFi networks that are now connecting to the central network.” 

A partnership based on collaboration

Telsy’s partnership with Forcepoint is still in its early days but the future looks bright for the two companies, Di Luca said. 

“We started to work with Forcepoint because when we decided to operate in the enterprise market, we needed a partner with products we could rely on to complement our own threat intelligence, threat prevention, and threat investigation capabilities,” he said.

“We continue to work only with partners where we are able to  attain the highest level of partnership—and with Forcepoint we  are Platinum Partners, so we have done that. It’s very important  to us to have that level of partnership, because we don’t simply want to be a reseller of products but to work closely with our partners to define solutions, support solutions, and provide  value to our customers.”