Brazil’s Big Data & Analytics Sector Set to Become a Billion Dollar Market

By Narayan Ammachch, Nearshore Americas

Brazilian big data and analytics market revenue will grow fourfold over the next four years, with many corporate firms looking for newer solutions to speed up their data processing.  This market, which made $243.6 million in revenue in 2013, is set to reach $965 million by 2018, according to market analyst firm Frost and Sullivan.

While some businesses in Brazil are aware of big data, most do not know where and how to begin using it to their benefit. The report says service providers’ current offers are not clear enough to help clients understand the returns on investment. Moreover, differing taxonomy by various vendors to define big data make the different investment options all the more confusing.

The industry is still in its infancy but offers immense opportunities for new entrants and investments, because Brazilian companies are aggressively pursuing new solutions that can integrate data and run processes faster, the report notes.

“Most companies in the country are unprepared to process the briskly growing amount of internal and external data. In fact, data volume growth is so high that some routine and important processes in enterprises now take too much time to run with traditional solutions,” the report says.

 “Big data projects enable firms to access relevant information that cannot usually be easily found or analyzed,” said Guilherme Campos, Frost and Sullivan’s ICT analyst. “Solutions structured to process big data also allow companies to act predicatively.”

As a result, the biggest user demand in this budding market is currently for consulting services on how to use big data and capitalize on its advantages. Service providers are also working with universities to train and create more experts while simultaneously developing user-friendly solutions.

“This will quicken adoption in verticals, such as finance, telecommunications, manufacturing and retail, that are already mature enough to implement big data analytics,” noted Campos. “Government investments in big data will grow exponentially due to projects that will bring more agility, security and transparency to governmental information.”

Brazilian government outlines technology priorities for 2014

Summary: The creation of a cyber-security policy and investment in research are key targets 

By Angelica Mari, Brazil Tech 

The Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) has outlined its priorities for 2014 and the development of the country's basic technology policies, as well as international development programs are on top of the list.

MCTI minister Marco Antônio Raupp announced the list of targets for this year, which include six key areas of focus. The first is the development of cybersecurity policies. According to the minister, a major target for the government within technology is to "develop technology, knowledge and new systems that give more security to the operation of public and private sector networks in Brazil." 

The Brazilian government announced in October that it is looking to invest in startups specializing in cybersecurity and defense so that it can be better prepared for future threats.

As part of this workstream, a two-day Global Conference on the Future of Internet Governance will be held in April. As the event name suggests, the idea is to create a global governance model for the Internet. Representatives of the academic and technology community, the public and private sector and the civil society are set to take part, as well as representatives from other countries.

The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) would be the main partner in the activities around cybersecurity and governance.

The approval of the Science Code is another priority. The law proposal of the bill 2177/2011, also known as the "Science Code" is aimed at making researchers' lives simpler. This would be done by setting specific standards for less bureaucracy in technology research and greater flexibility throughout the process of planning and implementation of projects, particularly in areas such as equipment imports and contracting services. "This new regulatory framework is essential to increase, facilitate and promote the activities of science, technology and innovation in the country," says minister Raupp.

Funding for infrastructure supporting technology research is also on the government agenda. According to Raupp, some R$420mi ($178mi) of the federal sector-focused infrastructure budget were allocated to the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development. The money will continue to be invested in the implementation, modernization, expansion and refreshing the physical infrastructure of national research through public tenders. "I'd say we were pretty consistent in channelling resources to public science and technology institutions in in 2013," the minister says.

In a similar vein, the Brazilian government will be ploughing resources into technology-focused government agencies. The creation of four Centers for Strategic Technologies focused on the Northeast, the Atlantic Rainforest and the Wetlands will go ahead this year, as well as another facility for water resources. 

Raupp took stock of the initiative to use advanced technology tools to monitor natural disasters across the country throughout the country, launched last May. So far, some 934 automatic rain gauges were delivered, as well as 771 semiautomatic rain gauges and two weather radars.

"We are seeing the result now, during the current summer rain season," says Raupp. "We are avoiding deaths by alerting the authorities to take action when needed and mitigate the effects of these natural disasters. This is a social program of great importance, because landslides and floods happen every end of year and cause massive disruption to the population."

After the shambolic launch of the Brazilian-Chinese satellite last year, Brazil now wants to build another one in 2014. The continuity of the Brazilian Space Program is a key item in Raupp's agenda and the launch of the new CBers series satellite, which was planned for 2015, will happen this year, according to the minister." We are accelerating the program of CBERS - 4 to compensate for the failure of CBers-3," Raupp says. Last year, the latest version of the satellite jointly developed by China and Brazil did not go into orbit due to technical issues in the launch vehicle.

The Brazilian government will also continue its educational, innovation and entrepreneurship programs focused on science, technology and innovation.

Key programs the MCTI wants to continue putting resources into are Science without Borders, an international scholarship program focused on technology and science students - since its start in 2011, the initiative has given 60,000 out of the 101,000 scholarships it has set out to award until 2015 - as well as Plano Inova Empresa, an innovation grant to private sector companies with a cash pool of R$32.9mi ($14mi).

Raupp also cited the progress made by Start-Up Brasil, the R$20mi ($8.4mi) initiative focused on backing entrepreneurs in Brazil and abroad - some 100 companies have been backed by the project so far, out of which 20 are from other countries. Further selection processes are expected to take place this year.

Another area of progress mentioned by Raupp is the creation of the training program Brasil Mais TI, which trained 103,000 people in 2013, as well as partnerships with global research and development centers of four companies including SAP. The idea, according to the minister, is to continue these workstreams and exceed last year's targets.

Beamr my up from Israel

Data compression company Beamr makes a product to compress imagery and video, without comprising any quality.

By Karin Kloosterman, ISRAEL21c

Data compression company Beamr is not able to send an actual person through cyberspace, but their technology does promise to deliver us humanoids “life” quality video at warp speed.

The company’s made-in-Israel core technology works to compress imagery and video, without comprising quality. Beamr’s tuned algorithms manage to make compression adjustments to visual data, essentially optimizing a file size, while the naked eye notices nothing.

This is really big news for personal computer users, e-commerce sites and the streaming media market.

For everyday folks, Beamr can scale down images straight off your laptop, in the cloud or through Dropbox, clearing up as much as 80 percent of the allocated drive space.

Going from 100 gigabytes to just 30 “makes a lot of space left over for other stuff,” says Dror Gill, CTO of Beamr: “You can search on Twitter and see how much praise we get from users.”

People can do image optimization manually, but Beamr does this automatically and en masse, and just to the point where image artifacts would be noticed by the eye. (A possible downside: compression effects cannot be reversed.)

Buffers video download time

But the big news and business development is in video, Gill says. About 10 major companies, some from Hollywood, are testing out the software to see if it can alleviate media streaming flow issues.

People want video on demand, not video that stops with Brad Pitt in mid-air or mid-kiss. They want Blu-ray quality. They want the latest and they want it now.

This is where Beamr is hoping to rake in the big bucks: “From Blu-ray disks or video cameras we can optimize the video [by compressing it] five times and yet it still looks exactly like the quality of a Blu-ray film,” says Gill.

“We could take streaming videos of Netflix or Hulu and reduce them by 20 to 50 percent of their size. This offers a very important advantage to the providers because when you reduce the bit rate, there is less buffering and the user is very happy. It can also reduce delivery costs,” Gil adds. 

For consumers in Canada who pay for bandwidth, the cost savings for them could be significant.

The product was launched in September at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam and an evaluation version is now installed in three of the largest Hollywood studios, according to Gil.

“We haven’t sold a product yet, but 10 customers are evaluating it for streaming their premium content. We can promise a return of investment in 30 days,” he boasts. “You save on every delivery.”

Like many Israeli high-tech success stories, there is often a secret or powerful IDF intelligence unit at its core. Beamr’s founders aren’t from the illustrious Unit 8200 intelligence group, but its founder Sharon Carmel helped develop battleground simulation software.

Google Acquires Authentication-by-Sound Startup SlickLogin

Google has quietly acquired security startup SlickLogin, an Israeli company working on innovative authentication solutions that leverage mobile and audio technology.

Mike Lennon, SecurityWeek

Founded by three graduates of the Israeli Defense Force’s elite cyber security unit, SlickLogin’s founders say they started the company “because security measures had become overly complicated and annoying.”

As Techcrunch explained when the company launched, “SlickLogin can use a bunch of protocols to start verifying your phone’s position: WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, visual markers like QR codes, and of course, GPS. Their self-dubbed “secret sauce”, though, is their use of uniquely generated sounds intentionally made inaudible to the human ear. Your computer plays the sound through its speakers, while an app on your smartphone uses the device’s built-in microphone to pick up the audio.”

“Today we`re announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a company that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and authentication should be effective without getting in the way,” the SlickLogin team wrote on their company web site.

Google has not said if or how SlickLogin’s technology would be integrated into its security measures, but the founders of startup hint that they will be working as part of Google’s two-factor authentication product team.

“Google was the first company to offer 2-step verification to everyone, for free - and they're working on some great ideas that will make the Internet safer for everyone,” they wrote. “We couldn't be more excited to join their efforts.”

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The Cyber-Security Capital of the World

It’s no secret that the newest cyber-security and cyber-defense software is being coded in Israel.

By Viva Shara Press, Israel21c

In fact, in early 2014, multinational players IBM, Cisco, EMC, Lockheed Martin RSA and Deutsche Telekom all announced plans to set up cyber-research facilities in CyberSpark, Israel’s new cyber-security technology park in Beersheva.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the establishment of the new national cyber complex in the Negev city at the Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv – where some 450 heads of industry and cyber-security agencies from across the globe came to see an expo of Israeli security companies and startups.

Two years after the founding of the Israel National Cyber Bureau (INCB), Netanyahu predicted that Beersheva would “not only be the cyber capital of Israel but one of the most important places in the cyber security field in the world.”

“Just looking at the innovation that Israel has generated over the past several years especially in cyber security, it’s a growing area of focus and we want to be part of that,” Verizon infrastructure protection executive Sean Paul McGurk tells ISRAEL21c, explaining why he made the trip to Tel Aviv..

The number of Israeli cyber-defense companies has ballooned from a few dozen to some 220 in the last few years, according to the Tel Aviv-based IVC Research Center. That’s about five to 10 percent of the global $60 billion to $80 billion annual cyber-security market, says INCB Director Eviatar Matania.

Two other noteworthy facts: 78 Israeli cyber-security companies have raised $400 million since 2010; and about 20 multinational companies now operate online-security development centers in Israel (half of which were established since 2011).

“Cyber is the big engine for the Israeli market,” Theta-Ray VP R&D Ronen Lago tells ISRAEL21c. “We have the creativity to find out the new technologies.”

Japanese Internet giant snaps up Viber for $900 million

Viber Media, an Israeli-run firm whose mobile app lets users make phone calls and send text messages for free, is being acquired by one of Japan’s largest Internet service companies, Rakuten, for $900 million.

Orr Hirschauge, Inbal Orpaz, Amir Teig,  - Haaretz

A large chunk of the purchase price, however, is contingent on Viber meeting business targets, so the final price tag could be considerably lower.

Rakuten announced the deal on Friday, its latest acquisition in recent years. Viber boasts Voice over Internet Protocol technology, which makes international phone calls possible online.

“Viber understands how people actually want to engage and have built the only service that truly delivers on all fronts,” Rakuten chairman and chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani said in a statement. News of the acquisition comes just days after Viber CEO Talmon Marco denied that the company was in talks to be sold. But around six months ago, Viber approached investment bank Goldman Sachs to help it find a buyer.

Marco founded Viber in 2011 with partners from iMesh, one of Israel’s largest media and file-sharing companies. Although formally incorporated in Cyprus, Viber maintains an R&D center in Israel. Mikitani is expected to visit Israel in the next couple of weeks to meet with Viber’s staff.

On Friday, Marco sent an email to Viber employees assuring them that the company had no intention of pulling its operations out of Israel, adding that it would boost the resources available for development activities here. Meanwhile, Rakuten said it would not fiddle with Viber’s development centers here and in Belarus.

Viber has about 280 million registered users around the world and grew 120% last year, Rakuten said. Around 100 million people actively use the product each month. The company’s instant messaging app, which allows users to make mobile calls to both Viber users and nonsubscribers, makes it a rival to Skype.

Viber has not received any funding from venture capital firms for its VoIP technology, but it recently launched new services to diversify its income sources. Among them is Viber Out, which allows users to make international calls to non-Viber users at low rates.

The company’s financing methods have thus been unorthodox. Rather than raising funds from outside investors or venture capital funds, the founders have provided financing themselves. Their stake in iMesh let them finance Viber’s operations from iMesh’s profits.

Rakuten’s acquisition of Viber is the latest foray in its acquisition spree. In 2012, it snapped up Kobo, one of the world’s fastest-growing e-book services, and Wuaki.tv, a video-on-demand and streaming service. In September 2013, it bought digital content platform Viki, which now reaches 65% of its 30 million monthly users through mobile devices.

“Rakuten … is truly dominant in its home market of Japan and has been rapidly expanding globally,” Talmon said in a statement. “This combination presents an amazing opportunity for Viber to enhance our rapid user growth in both existing and new markets. Sharing similar aspirations with Rakuten, our vision is to be the world’s No.1 communications platform, and our combination with Rakuten is an important step in that direction.”

Brazil - New Anti Corruption and information security Law

This month comes into force law# 12.846, signed in August 1, 2013, by President Dilma Rousseff, known as Anti-Corruption Law. An organization, involved in prosecuting corruption situations, will need to have a good information security Organizational Process to minimize their problems, whether guilty or not guilty.

All activities of an organization that uses the information, whether in the computing environment and/or in the conventional environment, must have appropriate controls to protect this information.

The 2013 version of NBR ISO/IEC 27002 features 114 basic controls for the existence of information security.

Based on law #12.846, I would highlight three items that clearly indicate (for those who want to hear) the need for information security controls. Let's See:

a) 3^rd Art.– legal person's liability does not exclude individual liability of its directors or managers or of any natural person, author, co-author, or participant of tort.

The innovation of this law is the possibility of penalization of the legal entity. However, this third article indicates that this fact does not exclude individual liability. To have recorded individual actions/use of information requires:

•  individual non-transferable identification;
• user authentication which ensures that the user is really himself.
• record of what the user did with the information, with information systems and information resources.
•  authorization of the use of the information for another user who has authority and responsibility for such authorization.
• Save this information to allow auditability of what was done.

b) 5^th Art. I – promising, offering or giving, directly or indirectly, undue advantage to public agent, or to a person related to him; (Harmful Act)

For communication between people e-mail is heavily used, and sure enough in a situation of investigation, this service will be analyzed. The organization needs to have Email usage policies, individual use, guard definition of messages, and clear responsibilities communicated to users. In some organizations it is common the use (not recommended never through security) of e-mail accounts where the ID is the post and not a person. This facilitates some procedures, but complicates accountability and also requires more complicated rules for the use of the tool of e-mail in these situations.

c) 5^th Art.  V – Obstruct investigation activity of supervisory organs, entities or public agents. (Harmful Act).

If an investigative body requests the Organization to audit the trail of access to systems or using tools like e-mail, and if this organization does not have the audit records recorded and stored, with individual IDs and other controls, it can be interpreted by the judiciary as an obstacle to investigations. Not having copies and other information security controls, required by NBR ISO/IEC 27002, could cause a judicial decision not favorable to the Organization, and have its name framed in black list of organizations that engage in corruption.

These three items of the law are more explicit in relation to information security controls. But, surely, an organization that follows the international regulations that are accepted in Brazil in relation to information security, will help in a possible problem in this topic or in other alike situations.

BY Prof. Ms. Edison Fontes, CISM, CISA, CRISC

Consultant in Information Security, Risk Management, Business Continuity.

Author of five books on the topic of information security..

edison@pobox.com ; www.nucleoconsult.com.br 

Free translation by Google Translate 

Balloons to bring internet to remote areas in Brazil

Summary: The government is developing its own "Internet Balloons infrastructure"  and will prioritize national companies for partnerships

By Angelica Mari, Brazil Tech 

The Brazilian government is planning to start a project using balloons to take internet access to remote areas of the country — and that has nothing to do with the Google Loon project.

Google representatives have met Brazilian government officials last week to talk about potential partnerships, but the initiative led by the public telecoms company Telebrás and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been signed off by the federal government back in May and the first tests are scheduled to begin next month.

The government has preferred off-the-shelf equipment for the trials and a prototype made by Altave, a startup from the São Paulo countryside city of São José dos Campos has been chosen for the upcoming trials. The idea is to customize existing options and test their performance to enable the development of a final version of the internet baloon.

Telebrás president Caio Bonilha told Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo that the government will prefer to work with national suppliers and import as little electronic equipment as possible — but added that the competitive process for the project will be open to local and foreign parties to ensure that the best option is chosen.

Connecting rural areas with the balloons is a model the government is very keen to develop. Senior representatives of the Ministry of Communications have been quoted as saying that the cost of that option is much lower than that of a transmission tower, with the added bonuses of ease of deployment and greater reach.

Next month's tests will be carried out at an INPE base in the São Paulo countryside, with the Altave balloon attached to the ground and also attached to a moving vehicle, which will then send the internet signal to the local city hall and a school.

The following steps after the test phase will be to define the companies that will take part in the project, develop a more advanced prototype next year and create a final product in 2015.