Speaking to Telecoms.com at Mobile World Congress 2015 Remi de-Fouchier, Marcomms VP of Gemalto’s telecom business unit, insisted the issues raised by the latest round of Snowden revelations are more to do with privacy than security.

“This is more about privacy, because that was what was at stake,” he said. “It’s about showing our customers that those keys need to be complemented with other security methods so that if one is compromised the other is not. It is very important that we are able to provide a blend of hardware, mobile software and cloud security.”

Understandably de-Fouchier was keen to focus more on its many announcements at the show than the story, but it was clear that the company has been experiencing an unprecedented level of public awareness. Since Gemalto moved quickly to address the claims the story doesn’t seem to have done any lasting damage to the company’s image and may well have initiated many useful discussions the company would not otherwise have had.

Gemalto’s stand at the show was demonstrating a pretty diverse array of products and services, including the LinqUs mobile marketing tool and some interesting NFC innovations, so we asked de-Fouchier to give us a summary.

“There are three aspects we have been developing here,” he said. “The first one is the m-commerce space with our mobile payment and mobile banking platforms. The second part is the Internet of Things, where we are showcasing a track and trace system and the third one is on mobile identity and mobile security, where we bought SafeNet and demonstrated two business priorities for our customers: cloud encryption and mobile ID.”

The phrase ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ may apply to Gemalto and the Snowden story, since it has provided more exposure than it could ever have reasonably expected to achieve though conventional marketing means. At the price of having to field a few awkward questions the company was given the opportunity to demonstrate the breadth of its offering to significantly enlarged audience.