AT&T Cybersecurity has officially become a standalone entity as LevelBlue launched today at RSA Conference 2024. The rebranded business is backed by capital investment from Chicago-based investor WillJam Ventures.

The tier-one operator announced last November that it reached an agreement to create a standalone managed cybersecurity services business with the capital investment from WillJam Ventures. The financial terms of the transaction remained undisclosed.

AT&T retains minority ownership stake

Bob McCullen, chairman and CEO of LevelBlue and managing partner of WillJam Ventures, told SDxCentral that the deal was closed a couple of weeks ago and WillJam Ventures is now the majority owner of LevelBlue, with AT&T retaining a minority ownership stake and board representation in the new entity. AT&T will be “an alliance partner, meaning that will work together with their customers and new opportunities,” he said.

The new company plans to continue offering security services including manage security services provider (MSSP), cybersecurity consulting, threat intelligence and continuous security operations center (SOC) support.

“LevelBlue will look to bolster our threat intelligence capabilities. And a lot of that revolves around not just the people but the technology. So we'll be we already have projects in AI [artificial intelligence] and ML [machine learning], and we'll continue to invest in that. We'll also look at mergers and acquisitions as appropriate,” McCullen said.

He added Level Blue currently has more than 1,000 employees, inheriting former AT&T Cybersecurity employees in the cyber group that includes the managed services, consulting and technology teams.

The company is looking to grow the business in other areas such as in sales, engineering or operations, McCullen said. “We currently have eight operation centers around the world. And so we'll be looking at those locations and looking to see how we can provide a better quality of service and be easier to do business with in this market.”

LevelBlue continues to serve AT&T Cybersecurity customers

LevelBlue aims for a seamless transition for existing AT&T Cybersecurity customers, including most of the Fortune 1000 companies in the U.S. and many state, local, and federal governments, according to McCullen.

“Since the November announcement, we've been working on that data and migration, and a number of the systems that we already had were already in place. And so there's some additional things that we're continuing to migrate over which will give us better visibility into the customer,” he said.

The new startup also will continue to be part of AT&T’s network-embedded security strategy by partnering with the operator to offer network-based security on top of the connectivity, while also providing other layers of security to the customers.

In addition, as a standalone business, LevelBlue will be able to work with other operators and telcos to support a multicarrier, multinational security offering.

Expanding managed secure access service edge (SASE) services

Under LevelBlue’s managed security service portfolio, SASE is currently the fastest-growing business. “You're seeing a transition from premise-based security to cloud-based and network-based security,” McCullen said.

The company plans to continue partnerships with leading SASE vendors such as Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and Cisco, while evaluating up-and-coming vendors that might fit into its portfolio for different use cases and various business sizes.

“You could be a large bank and have a big office, but then you have a lot of small retail offices, so you may have to have different SASE vendors or SSE [security service edge] vendors in that solution,” McCullen said. “That also plays to our strengths that we have capability to support multicloud, so we can support Google, Microsoft and Amazon clouds and provide hybrid solutions along with our own data centers around the world.”