Threat detection and response firm SecureWorks is laying off roughly 15% of its staff, in the second round of firings announced by the company this year.
The plans were announced in an SEC filing, with employees being notified starting August 14. In addition, the company revealed that it’s implementing “certain real estate‑related cost optimization actions”.
“Under the Plan, the Company intends to rebalance investments cross-functionally in alignment with the Company’s current strategy and growth opportunities, such as focusing on the higher value, higher margin Taegis solutions, optimizing the Company’s organizational structure to increase its scalability, and other priorities, to better position the Company for continued growth with improving operating margins over time,” SecureWorks said.
Severance and other termination benefits, as well as expenses related to real estate are expected to total approximately $14.2 million.
The layoffs will impact people in the US, UK, Japan, India, Australia, the Middle East, Romania and other European countries.
In a memo sent to employees on Monday, SecureWorks CEO Wendy Thomas said the goal is “to simplify and scale our business and to deliver profitable growth”.
This is the second round of layoffs at SecureWorks this year. In February, it announced terminating roughly 9% of its workforce — or approximately 200 employees — in an effort to cut costs.
At the time, the company said it had 2,149 full-time employees. This indicates that the latest round of firings impacts roughly 300 people.
SecureWorks’ announcement comes just days after Rapid7 announced an 18% reduction in employee headcount and the closing of some offices as part of restructuring plans. Roughly 500 people could be impacted.
Also this month, the bug bounty platform HackerOne said it would terminate up to 12% of its 450 employees as part of what the company’s CEO, Marten Mickos, described as a “one-time event”.
Other major cybersecurity firms that announced layoffs this year include Dragos, which fired 50 employees (9% of its workforce), and SentinelOne, which terminated 100 employees (5% of its workforce).
Related: Dozens of Cybersecurity Companies Announced Layoffs in Past Year
Related: The Effect of Cybersecurity Layoffs on Cybersecurity Recruitment
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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