Utimaco, a leading global provider of IT security solutions, this month celebrates its 40th year pioneering trusted cybersecurity and compliance solutions and services to customers across the globe. To mark the key milestone, the company will kick off a series of activities across its headquarters and global offices to highlight the developments made but also the strategy to drive further innovation in a rapidly changing industry.
Utimaco was founded by Horst Görtz in 1983 as a general application software company through the acquisition of the computer center company Utilisation des Machines Comptables and renamed Uti-maco software GmbH. In the following years, he laid the foundations for Utimaco’s IT security business by introducing the PC-based data security system SAFE-MEN at CeBIT (which evolved into SAFE-GUARD). Following this was the release of SAFE-Board, an encryption card that used the Data Encrypting Standard (DES) code to encrypt data quickly, both on hard disks and for data transmission.
Today, Utimaco has over 550 global employees and headquarters in Aachen, Germany and Campbell (CA), USA. For the past 20 years, its focus has been on on-premises and more recently cloud-based hardware security modules (HSMs): the backbone of thousands of large organizations’ cybersecurity. These HSMs enable the key generation, data protection and identity management that secure our digital lives. A study by ABI established Utimaco as the overall leader in the HSM marketplace, praising their range of solutions and reporting: “No other vendor currently offers this level of diversity, and Utimaco is unique in this regard.”
Another key element of Utimaco’s solution portfolio is telecommunication compliance solutions used by governments and companies around the world. As it has grown, the company has made strategic acquisitions and expanded to encompass key management, PKI and Public Warning Systems (one of which was sent to the nation of Ukraine pro bono at the start of the current conflict there).
Looking into the future, the company is leading the way in the field of quantum cybersecurity, enabling organizations to secure themselves against threats from quantum computers that can break the current generation of digital security in seconds. Utimaco prides itself on staying ahead of the latest growing trends, including the growing importance of quantum-agility, and identified three key trends for 2023: protection of supply chains – both physical and digital – confidential computing and crypto asset management.
The company’s founder retired from an active role in the company in 2005, but he remains a figure in the wider cybersecurity industry through his Horst Görtz Security Award, one of the most prestigious awards in the German IT industry.
Since 2019, Utimaco has been led by its current CEO, Stefan Auerbach. “We are all incredibly proud to have reached this stage of our journey. We are now a global company on a very rapid growth trajectory, but more importantly the cybersecurity marketplace knows the name Utimaco,” says Stefan Auerbach, CEO of Utimaco. “We have become a mark of trust throughout the world, and when companies are looking to create or improve upon security solutions, they know that we have everything they need and will always be on the cutting edge of security technology.”
He added: “We are able to achieve this because of the work of Horst Görtz, not just in setting up the company, but establishing a culture that we strive to continue to this day, of a great team spirit, and an innovative strength that has always been alive in Utimaco.”
