IBM, at an official event on Thursday, April 4, 2019, featuring the participation of the Government of Costa Rica and the Coalición Costarricense de Iniciativas de Desarrollo (CINDE) – Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency – announced the expansion of its Global Security Services Center, located at Heredia in the America Free Zone, from which it monitors security events for hundreds of clients in more than 130 countries.
The expansion triples its operating capacity and will entail an investment of US$21 million over the course of 2019, underscoring the success it has had to date, as well as the international demand generated by the service it provides from Costa Rica for cybersecurity professionals.
With this expansion, President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, stated that “we thank IBM’s trust in Costa Rica’s human talent.”
“We celebrate this good news and we reiterate our commitment to keep working to optimize conditions so that multinationals, as significant as IBM, will keep on growing and helping to reactivate our country’s economy,” he added.
Matías Haidbauer, leader of Cybersecurity at IBM Costa Rica, commented: “With this investment, we will continue to consolidate the commitment to this country and our collaborators throughout the past 15 years. Our strategy is keyed to market trends, with considerable increases in worldwide cyber-attacks and to the quality of the service we provide from Costa Rica to our clients.”
Dyalá Jiménez, Minister of Foreign Trade, noted that: “2018 was a record year for attracting new Foreign Direct Investment to Costa Rica, with 48 projects from a variety of companies. Of these, 28 were reinvestments by companies already established here. Today, we’re celebrating IBM Costa Rica’s reinvestment, which has chosen our country for the expansion of its Global Security Services Center. This great news challenges us to keep on improving as a country, in terms of human talent and connectivity, and as a Government, we are working on this. I congratulate IBM for their performance and thank them for their work that helps grow Costa Rica.”
In Costa Rica, IBM began its cybersecurity operations in 2014 and today, this center is the company’s largest of its kind in Latin America, placing Costa Rica on the international map as a center of expertise in this field. The expansion will make it possible to keep on satisfying its clients all over the world for cutting-edge cybersecurity services.
Jorge Sequeira, Managing Director at CINDE, observed: “We are immensely pleased with IBM’s announcement, it demonstrates the potential we have as a country to become a global hub for operations of this kind, driven by its human talent.”
The expansion is also adding new services such as incident response and forensic analysis, administered managed detection and response and X-Force Threat Management to hundreds of clients all over the world on a 24×7 footing. The investment also includes the physical expansion of current facilities, as well as world-class training for local talent.
The worldwide increase in cyberattacks on companies and their platforms, in recent years, has boosted the demand for professionals to protect them, and the professional association ISC, which keeps track of global figures on the talent gap, has established that the global shortfall of such professionals comes to 2.93 million people.
The high level of skills found in Costa Rica and the talent positions Costa Rica as one of the countries with a big supply of cybersecurity personnel. Bilingual professionals and geographic location offer competitive advantages.
IBM celebrates its 15th anniversary in Costa Rica.
Sources: Presidencia; CINDE, IBM
