Kudelski Group was founded in 1951 by
Stefan Kudelski, while he was an engineering student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (
École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL). The company's first product was the Nagra I, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which weighed 11 pounds and measured 5"x7"x12" (roughly the size of a shoe box). It was succeeded by the Nagra II in 1953, which improved sound quality with additional mechanical filters. Kudelski released the Nagra III tape recorder in 1958, which could synchronize sound with the frames on a reel of film, which became popular for on-location filming. It was used by directors including
François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard, and
D. A. Pennebaker. Kudelski later expanded into television services, providing its access control system for pay television to
Canal+ in 1989.
André Kudelski replaced his father, Stefan Kudelski, as chief executive officer in 1991 following pressure from investors. Kudelski Group entered the cybersecurity sector with the creation in 2012 of Kudelski Security. In order to identify and remediate cyber-attacks, Kudelski Security operates Cyber Fusion Centers in
Switzerland,
Spain and the
United States. In 2016, the company opened a second headquarters in
Phoenix, Arizona. The same year, it launched Insight, the Group's
artificial intelligence and
big data business performance platform. Kudelski IoT was created in 2017, together with the launch of the Group's
Internet of Things Security Center of Excellence to address demand for increased protection of connected devices. == Subsidiaries==