US firm Tenable spots opportunities in LatAm amid automation surge

US firm Tenable sees plenty of opportunities to expand in Latin America amid an increase in automation projects being implemented by regional companies, mostly in the energy, mining and infrastructure verticals.

“Latin America has a big resource sector, mining, energy, among others, but also a lot of manufacturing and factories that are upping the ante on automation,” Tenable’s global CTO for IoT and operational technologies (OT), Marty Edward, told BNamericas. "There are lots of opportunities for us."

Edward was in the region recently for a series of meetings with customers and prospects to discuss projects, and one of his stops was São Paulo in Brazil.

Founded in 2002 and based in Maryland in the US, Tenable focuses on so-called exposure management, which involves solutions to protect industrial assets. The company provides systems so that OT and information technologies (IT) run safely as these two areas are increasingly combined.

It competes with players such as BeyondTrust, CrowdStrike, Nozomi and even Microsoft in certain cases.

Tenable does not report the size of its local operations. Globally, it claims to have over 40,000 companies and government organizations as clients.

The company added 386 new enterprise platform customers in 3Q23, reporting revenues of US$202mn, up 15% year-on-year.

Recently, Tenable said it also added genAI capabilities to its portfolio, as well as completing the acquisition of cloud-native application protection platform Ermetic. It also announced the expansion of a global partnership with Siemens Energy for the protection of OT environments in the energy sector.

“Brazil is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, growth areas for us in that space,” the executive said. “We had some talks with our local Siemens Energy partners about some initiatives. We’ll see how it goes," Marty said.

Mexico is also a strategically important market for the company.

Edward cites different talks taking place in Mexico and cites its diverse industrial park, the interconnection with the US economy and with US businesses, and the new nearshoring projects coming into play among the country's attributes.

According to Allied Market Research, the size of broader global risk management market was valued at US$7.39bn in 2019 and is projected to reach US$28.8bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 18.7% in the period.