Orange Cyberdefense wants to consolidate its foundations beyond its BBR (Bleu Blanc Rouge/ Blue-White-Red) horizon

Orange Cyberdefense gathered the analysts who follow it on 26/11/2024 in Paris to detail its short—and medium-term strategy.

Ranked No. 1 in France for cybersecurity services (consulting and managed services) according to the PAC 2023 ranking, this French cybersecurity player has spread its wings across several European markets through strategic acquisitions in France (Atheos 2014, Lexsi 2016), the UK (SecureData 2019), the Netherlands (Securelink 2019) and Switzerland (SCRT/Telsys 2022). By the end of 2024, more than half of Orange Cyberdefense’s business will be outside France (PAC estimate), well beyond the BBR horizon (but above all very Orange France), with which it was familiar when it was founded in 2016.

Starting from a revenue base of close to 20 M€ (PAC Estimates), mainly in France, Orange Cyberdefense is now a player of continental size in Europe and has announced 2023 revenues of 1.1 B€ with annual growth of 11%. Next Revenue publication will be in Feb .25. Energized by a dynamic and highly profitable market, re-energized by recruitment both inside and outside France, but above all outside the telco sector, and over-energized by its unprecedented technical capabilities, Orange Cyberdefense is preparing for new market horizons well beyond the Vosges blue line or BBR line. At the same time, it is keeping its European Pavilion, which is very useful when the geopolitical oppositions between the blocs are reawakening, and national and regional flags will surely be raised in cybersecurity.

How can this be achieved?

1. The CTI spearheads competence, technological relevance and independence.

The new head of Marketing and Technology (EVP Technology & Marketing), Olivier Bonnet de Paillerets, comes straight from the French MoD, where he held several roles, including head of the French Cybercommand. His conversion to the private sector has not made him lose his sense of mission: ‘We are convinced that our capacity for threat analysis (Cyber Threat Intelligence) is the answer to the threat, but above all to the need for sovereignty and trust, just as much as it is a guarantee of differentiation’, he explains. We hear technological independence in a standardized and globalized world. We can clearly see the geopolitical oppositions that are thinly veiled in his speech. To demonstrate this, a massive internal plan to consolidate sources of events and information has taken shape, heavily supported by the AI that Telco developed for its needs. ‘We are convinced that Orange Cyberdefense is a natural player in Cyber MSSP services, but we must also remain a Telco’, continues Olivier Bonnet de Paillerets. Orange Cyberdefense CTI services benefit from a unique and proprietary reservoir of technological knowledge under the name Core Fusion, that infuses all Orange Cyberdefense other solutions, including Soho and SMB and Bt2C services. Core Fusion draws on all the probes, detection tools, and agents managed directly by Orange Cyberdefense and the public and paid CTI feeds used by all the other MSSPs. Result: Over 50% of the IOCs (Indicators of Compromise + response-remediation solutions) are proprietary to Orange Cyberdefense. 42% of its sources come from the Telco network (Telco telemetry), 48% from Control & Command situations originating from the Telco and 42% of remediation solutions are tested on in-house Sandboxes. A Telco that knows how to defend itself against millions of simultaneous and permanent internal and external attacks is a good player in defending, protecting and securing its customers, from end to end, from the largest to the smallest. The annual edition of the Orange Cyberdefense Security Navigator 2025, a compendium of threats and their remediation, demonstrates Orange Cyberdefense’s capacity for this advanced detection and its technological autonomy. Mitesh Chauhan, the head of Global Product Management (SVP Product Management) and a veteran of product management in cybersecurity, pilots the portfolio of services and concludes: ‘geopolitics, polarization, disinformation and the erosion of trust are forcing CTI to evolve’. The massive use of AI in Core Fusion, in deep learning/machine learning mode, gives incident handling a significant facelift by significantly reducing incident response times and offering more exciting subjects for the analysts behind the consoles to deal with. Orange Cyberdefense explains they are now rid of Level 1 support process (but not people moved to level2), where tedious and worthless triage and decorrelation operations wear out patience and put pressure on the Turnover. The massive use of AI Gen, for its part, enables more consensual reports and tools to be generated, thereby improving the user and analyst experience.

2. Orange countries, a new market to conquer

Moving away from the blue line of the Vosges and 100% BBR has been a habit at Orange Cyberdefense since the 2019 to 2022 foreign acquisitions. In 2024, the active countries on the Orange Cyberdefense map outside France are, in descending order of revenues:  Sweden, UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, RoW (including RSA, China, USA, APAC), Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway. There is no commercial activity in Spain and Italy. This regional revenue breakdown is well below the Orange footprint in countries where Telco operates directly (26). On the B2B footprint of its cousin Orange Business (220 countries), joint sales actions with Orange Business open the full territory to Orange Cyberdefense. This raises the question of how and, above all, where to prioritize its actions. After Italy and Spain were at the top of the list, Orange Cyberdefense choses to follow in the footsteps of the Orange brand, which was already established, either directly or in combined mode (JV, Local Brand, etc.). The list of 26 countries has been revised, with priority given to Europe (near and eastern) and then Orange Africa, starting with Senegal, with highly packaged offers for B2C and the lower end of the B2B market. The offers, combined with mobile or fixed-line services, will also try to take advantage of the brand effect in Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Slovenia. This approach of regional expansion, without necessarily resorting to local acquisitions, is the most reasonable in terms of costs. An agile association with E-Lob, the Orange Business structure dedicated to designing B2B SME services for countries where Orange is the operator, will be beneficial. For customers, implementing Orange Cyberdefense services also represents an opportunity to improve the quality of CTI by collecting local events and situations in this new way.

3. The SMB France market in “Blitz Krieg” mode to win market share (and fuel CTI).

A massive increase in revenues is expected in the SMB segment in France for 2024 (PAC estimates). During the last 12 months, Orange Cyberdefense has effectively deployed its strategy on SMB and Soho domestic markets. Moving fast, on consolidated and autonomous technological bases in volume markets where the first to speak wins al. Commercial synergies between Orange Cyberdefense and the Group’s distribution network (Orange and Orange Business), known as Division Entreprise France (DeF) and its regional agencies, worked to the full in this Blitz Krieg mode, which took the market by storm. Very few generalists Cybersecurity managed services players are even close to entering this world where volume creates margin and no longer expertise as in the critical account markets where hand-crafted design creates value. The significant players in platform-based security (Microsoft in particular, with Google in ambush) will not fail to join forces or move closer to this highly capillary sales channel. We are still waiting to hear from the competition, which focuses on specific sub-segments (local authorities, supermarket networks, local industries). Players are only capable of aligning so many field teams and centralized Soc mode.

4. Conclusion

Under the impetus of its CEO Hugues FOULON, Orange Cyberdefense has wholly overhauled its line-up of experts and executives, both marketing and technical, to focus on a sum of renewed experience, totally international, totally expert in the cyber subject, while taking care not to lose its French and European soul and its Telco DNA. The renewal of the product portfolio, but above all, the 2025 focus on building an independent CTI that is available across all our offerings, provides a cutting-edge technological base that is highly up-to-date. It ensures Orange Cyberdefense’s technological capacity and independence. The subject of Professional Services offerings in an ultra-competitive sector where players are vying with each other to differentiate themselves resonates with a palpable consistency. SMB’s focus on the French market is strategically positioned to capitalize on a future volume market that is expected to experience significant growth. This is driven by the ongoing evolution of continuous threats, the introduction of new regulations (such as NIS2), and the increasing demand from both B2B and B2C consumers for enhanced trust in the digital aspects of their daily lives. Orange Cyberdefense’s financial performance, supported by strong Telco-DNA capabilities, positions this player at the center of the European cybersecurity landscape, alongside local, national, and continental competitors.