The Canadian company, which is headquartered in Ontario, provides security for $2.2trillion worth of online assets for a number of clients across the financial, legal and biopharma sectors.

Its main focus is on the financial services sector, where it protects hedge fund managers, private equity houses and brokers against online hacking and cyberattacks.

The company currently operates from its headquarters in Cambridge, Ontario, and from sales offices in the US and London.

Ballincollig, Co Cork, is set to be its first ‘security operations centre’ located outside of North America and will provide services for the EU-based divisions of the company’s existing international clients.

The Cork centre will go live in the autumn, with an initial staff of 15, but the company conservatively wants to grow its workforce here to 100 within five years.

A pro-business outlook — the move is backed by the Department of Jobs and Enterprise and IDA Ireland — and strong talent pool in Cork, attracted eSentire to Ireland over other potential locations such as the UK and the Netherlands.

“We evaluated several locations within Europe to expand our business and establish an EU base to better serve our clients on both sides of the ocean,” said eSentire’s chief technology officer, Mark McArdle.

“We were extremely impressed with the technical talent in Cork and the eco-system the government has helped to develop to fill the skills gap, specifically in the demanding and competitive field of cyber-security.”

Mr McArdle said Cork’s strong reputation as a ‘tech cluster’ location, with a strong technology talent pool was key to eSentire’s decision. Earlier this year, US cyber-security firm, Malwarebytes created 50 jobs through establishing a base in Cork, while web and email security company, FireEye has had a presence in the city for a couple of years.

“Cork generates some really smart people and access to job-ready talent and the overall commercially-friendly eco-system, in Ireland, were the main attractions for us,” he said.

“eSentire was attracted to Cork due to the solid pool of security talent available,” added IDA Ireland chief executive, Martin Shanahan.

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