Accenture Acquires Morphus and Launches Cyber Industry Practice in Latam

Accenture has acquired a Brazil-based cybersecurity firm and launched a cyber industry practice in Latin America.

The global professional services company purchased Morphus, a provider of cyber defense, risk management and cyber threat intelligence services, and named chief information security officers (CISOs) from that firm to lead its new practice in the region, Accenture said in a Monday (Feb. 13) press release.

“The acquisition brings more than 230 highly skilled professionals, making Accenture one of the largest cybersecurity professional services providers in Brazil,” Paolo Dal Cin, who leads Accenture Security globally, said in the release.

More than 50% of financial firms in 45 countries said they were not confident about their storage and backup security, while another quarter said they were significantly concerned, according to a survey released in 2022 by data storage firm Continuity.

Beyond that, 59% of the firms surveyed said they were not confident their organization’s data could recover from a ransomware attack, according to the report.

Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) is among the more troubling aspects of crypto criminal activity, due to the ready-made malware tools cybercriminals can buy and deploy without needing much technical or criminal expertise, according to a 2022 report by Chainalysis.

While data being held hostage in exchange for bitcoin is a widespread and growing problem, a larger issue at hand could have much wider implications than monetary loss, the report said.

There have already been instances of ransomware-type attacks prompted by geopolitical goals, espionage, disruption of government operations and more.

The acquisition of Morphus brings the number of acquisitions made by Accenture Security to 16  since 2015. These include the purchase of Symantec’s Cyber Security Services business in 2020, Brazil-based Real Protect in 2021, and European companies Sentor and Openminded in 2021, according to the press release.

“The cybersecurity team at Morphus will accelerate the growth of our cyber industry practice in the region, nearly doubling our security footprint in Brazil,” Andre Fleury, Accenture Security lead for Latin America, said in the release. “The acquisition complements our global security practice and will enable us to help our clients embed security by design and enhance the offerings we provide across a wide variety of industries in Latin America.”