Protecting personal, business information a key concern in a high-tech Latin America
As globalization continues to charge forward, the safety of information of all kinds is most at risk both around the world and in Latin America.
A panel of experts described the challenges to protecting personal information, business information and intellectual property at WorldCity’s Global Connection on Nov. 18.
“Twenty years ago there was a growing movement in information technology. Ten years ago there was a growing movement in security,” said Daniel Molina, business development director for emerging Latin America markets for Kaspersky Lab. Today “CEOs come in and say they want their email on their new iPad.
“They want it all and who’s protecting that?” he asked.
With increasing amounts of business information moving online comes more opportunities for it to be accessed, stolen or damaged by outsiders. The chance for that to happen also increases as people increasingly travel abroad for work and pleasure.
“I’ve had my credit card stolen twice,” said Peter Quinter, chair of law firm Becker & Poliakoff’s customs and international trade practice. “It happens every year.”
“When you travel you have to have a couple of credit cards you don’t use,” said Dr. Ronald De Meo, founder of Radiation Shield Technologies, which makes Demron, a compound that protects against nuclear, ballistic, biological and chemical agents. “Someone will hack into your credit card and [the company] will shut your card down” leaving you stranded in a foreign country with no money.
At the same time, credit card hackers can also attack companies’ websites.
“We recently had an issue with our web store where we had $6,000 in service charges,” De Meo added. “Some group tested [stolen] credit cards on our website and they made 10-cent transactions 16,000 times.”
Creating laws and agencies to combat these groups and practices are difficult to develop because hackers can be located in one country, using servers that might be halfway around the world to access the information of some in a nearby country.
Meanwhile, living and doing business in a high-tech world also means that companies’ products can be easily counterfeited, though made in exactly the same way with exactly the same materials as the originals.
“There’s no guarantee that your merchandise is real or genuine,” said Quinter of Becker & Poliakoff. “I’m a factory in China and I have a contract to make 100,000 Blackberrys and say I make another 10,000.
“They’re all genuine, it’s not the authorized supply chain, but they’re still real,” he added.
Up to 10 percent of all the products in the world, Quinter continued, are not genuine. When those types of products arrive in the U.S. they are often seized by customs and the shipper, not the manufacturer who made the goods, is the one who’s penalized.
More broadly, panelists raised concern about the stringency of federal agencies when it comes to processing and monitoring cargo shipments.
“When you travel the world and you to talk to people and they talk about their experience arriving in the states just the experience… is not that pleasant,” Quinter said. “Similarly the trade and cargo you’re sending from Germany to Brazil typically would’ve come through Miami, but now that cargo isn’t touching the U.S.
It might be going through “Jamaica, the Bahamas or it might be a straight sale,” he added.
The next Global Connections forum is scheduled for Jan. 27 and will feature WorldCity’s annual global economic outlook for 2012.