Thales to Accelerate its Cybersecurity Development with OneWelcome

Thales has announced the signature of an agreement to acquire OneWelcome, a European leader in the fast growing market of Customer Identity and Access Management, for a total consideration of €100 million. OneWelcome’s strong digital identity lifecycle management capabilities will complement Thales’ existing Identity services (secure credential enrollment, issuance, and management, Know Your Customer, etc) to provide the market’s most comprehensive Identity Platform.

OneWelcome, headquartered in the Netherlands, provides cloud-based customer identification and access management for highly regulated industries, enabling them to securely connect customers and business partners to their online services. OneWelcome currently protects tens of millions of European identities for lighthouse clients such as Malakoff Humanis, PostNL, and the European Central Bank. Thales intends to use its regional experience to fulfill the worldwide demand for better identification and data privacy management.

Indeed, the OneWelcome business will satisfy the growing demand for convenient and secure access, as well as data privacy, which is critical in regulated markets, such as those subject to GDPR compliance. It should be mentioned that one of OneWelcome’s major competencies is to provide users with greater control over their information and data, across any platform or application, by assisting them with password management and consent preferences.

Thales will now provide a comprehensive Identity Platform that will enable organizations of all sizes to manage internal and external identities, allowing them to bring new businesses online fast while improving operational efficiency and customer experience and meeting or exceeding regulatory compliance.

With 100+ employees and customers across Europe, OneWelcome is experiencing strong growth of over 30 percent year-on-year. OneWelcome will join Thales Digital Identity and Security global business unit. Gartner predicts that by 20232, 72 percent of organizations will be rolling out a CIAM initiative, versus 40 percent in 2020.

Thales intends to hire 11,000 people worldwide by 2022, including 1,000 in cybersecurity.

The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other standard closing conditions, and it is scheduled to close in the second half of 2022.