Thales Joins Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative

New Gold Member Partners with CII to Improve Internet Security and Fortify Open Source Infrastructure

San Francisco, June 6, 2017 – The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), a project managed by The Linux Foundation that collaboratively works to improve the security and resilience of critical open source projects, today announced that Thales is joining as a new gold member.

A leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, Thales offers advanced data security solutions and services, delivering trust wherever information is created, shared or stored. It is recognized for its deep information and cryptographic security expertise that enables organizations to confidently accelerate their digital transformation. Thales technology is found right across the enterprise, in financial services, retail, healthcare and government and secures more than 80% of debit card transactions around the world.

The CII’s mission is to ensure that the open source code that underpins business today is secure and resilient. Many of the world’s largest technology companies already belong to CII, and Thales is the first global security business to join the initiative.

“CII is incredibly excited to see our membership base expand and add a security-focused company like Thales, which has a vast understanding of the complex information technology demands we face in today’s digital world,” said Nicko van Someren, CII Executive Director. “Its investment validates the importance of CII and is a great vindication of our work to security harden open source infrastructure to combat today’s complicated threat landscape.”

“Thales has implemented open source building blocks and standards both internally and for customers for two decades,” said Jon Geater, Chief Technology Officer at Thales e-Security. “Open Source in general and Linux in particular have become core to delivery of modern products and system, offering distinct utility, cost and performance advantages that we increasingly leverage to solve real-world problems. By joining CII we can bring our expertise and focus on security to bear on strengthening core open source infrastructure and working to eliminate the security weaknesses that can emerge from less well maintained or directed inclusion of Open Source technology into products and infrastructure in the Cloud and IoT era. This shared vision of Thales and the Linux Foundation is critical to Thales’s strategic development objectives, our ability to serve our customers, and to improving the state of the Connected World more generally.”

CII recently celebrated its three-year anniversary and announced a new governance structure to enable it to scale up its operations going forward.

About Thales e-Security

Thales e-Security is the leader in advanced data security solutions and services, delivering trust wherever information is created, shared or stored. We ensure that company and government data is secure and trusted in any environment – on premise, in the cloud, in data centers and in big data environments – without sacrificing business agility. Security doesn’t just reduce risk, it’s an enabler of the digital initiatives that now permeate our daily lives – digital money, e-identities, healthcare, connected cars and with the internet of things (IoT) even household devices. Thales provides everything an organization needs to protect and manage its data, identities and intellectual property and meet regulatory compliance – through encryption, advanced key management, tokenization, privileged user control and meeting the highest standards of certification for high assurance solutions. Security professionals around the globe rely on Thales to confidently accelerate their organization’s digital transformation. Thales e-Security is part of Thales Group. www.thales-esecurity.com

About Thales

Thales is a global technology leader for the Aerospace, Transport, Defense and Security markets. With 64,000 employees in 56 countries, Thales reported sales of €14.9 billion in 2016. With over 25,000 engineers and researchers, Thales has a unique capability to design and deploy equipment, systems and services to meet the most complex security requirements. Its exceptional international footprint allows it to work closely with its customers all over the world.

About The Core Infrastructure Initiative

CII is a multimillion-dollar project that funds and supports critical open source elements of the global information infrastructure. It is organized by The Linux Foundation and supported by Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, Hitachi, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, NEC, salesforce.com, and VMware. Moving beyond funding projects, CII is introducing preemptive tools and programs to help the open source ecosystem and the companies who support it deploy secure coding practices. For more information, please visit: https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences, including LinuxCon and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at http://www.linuxfoundation.org.