It should come as no surprise that the Internet of Things has become popular with agritech firms. The wide network of connected sensors that characterizes IoT systems are ideal for farming as they can alleviate the time-heavy monitoring aspect of the industry through devices that can measure weather, water levels and soil health.

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It’s the path to helping us lead more sustainable lives on the planet and undertake the significant task of feeding more than 7.5 billion people on the planet. By 2050, there are expectations that the global population will reach 9.7 billion, which will require massive efforts to boost food production levels by 70 percent – which is where IoT in agritech comes in.

Agritech powered by IoT can help allocate resources more effectively for the highest impact, while also reducing out carbon footprint in the world. An independent research project commissioned by Inmarsat found that agritech has seen some of the highest IoT adoption levels in a cross-industry survey, outpacing mining, transport and energy.

The Internet of Things (IoT) devices could help us grow food more rapidly and waste fewer resources. Source: Shutterstock

“Agritechs are already proving a boon for farmers, deploying technologies like IoT to help them speed up the journey that food takes from ‘seed to bin’ and from ‘farm to fork’,” said Chris Harry-Thomas, director of Inmarsat’s sector development agriculture department.

“IoT technologies are being leveraged to automate irrigation and fertilization systems on farms, to add new precision to operations and reduce waste, and to automate farming machinery, reducing the need for manual intervention.”

However, with widespread tech comes the challenge of defending against the rising tide of cyber-based attacks that are speeding up all over the world in various industries.

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According to the “Future of IoT in Enterprise – 2017” study, though around 54 percent of surveyed enterprises have already implemented IoT or are in the midst of doing so, only 23 percent are totally confident of the ability of their security systems to defend against encroaching security threats.

The study surveyed respondents from 100 of the world’s big agritech companies and asked them about their IoT integration plans. Though the majority (52 percent) of respondents said that they were investing in new security technologies to complement their IoT systems, 55 percent said that they confident about their systems’ to counter cyberattacks.

The speed of adoption of new technologies into agriculture without a concurrent rise in cybersecurity could endanger the sector. Source: Shutterstock

“These threats are not trivial. Whereas an industrial-scale cyber attack in any industry can do significant harm to a business’s bottom line, such an attack in the agricultural sector could see whole crops decimated and have severe consequences for the quality of life of entire populations,” said Harry-Thomas.

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“It’s therefore critical that agritech businesses can take the necessary measures to counter these risks, and it’s clear from our research that there is a significant amount of room for improvement in this area.”

According to the report, two key areas that needed to be improved to counter the occurrence of cyberattacks in the industry were network protections and demand of cybersecurity skills. Only 42 percent of surveyed said that “special consideration” had been given to the development of their IoT solutions.

Meanwhile, almost half (47 percent) of respondents said that they lacked the skills necessary to deploying IoT effectively, meaning that these systems are running largely understaffed. Over half (55 percent) of respondents said they needed additional support for their cybersecurity solutions.

The post Agriculture is our most vital industry and it needs cybersecurity appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

We’ve seen the effects of huge cyberattacks such as the WannaCry ransomware attack, the fall-out from the NotPetya event and the ongoing struggle surrounding Equifax. Suffice to say, this year has been a drawn-out affair of learning not just about those who would inflict harm on our systems but also our capabilities to protect ourselves.

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One could make the argument that we’re not doing a great job.

“It’s a constant battle between security and cybercrime and unfortunately, we have been playing catch up for years.” said Bill Taylor-Mountford, the vice-president for LogRhythm’s Japan and Asia Pacific branches, to Tech Wire Asia in an email interview.

The issue of cybersecurity has been neglected for so long – if not relegated to back-room tinkers working furiously against time in an ever-evolving industry – that we are all now playing catch-up. And what a time to be doing so! 2017 has, if nothing else, proven just how unprepared we all are.

Bill Taylor-Mountford. Source: LogRyhthm

Taylor-Mountford spoke about the kinds of trends and patterns that we can observe from the events that took place in the last year, as well as what we can possibly expect in the coming months. According to him, we will definitely begin to a significant increase in cyber attacks in the next year, a reality that will be fueled by three things: the potential profits of cybercrime, access to cybercrime tools and a rising trend of state-backed attacks.

“Cybercrime has become such a lucrative business, and the marketplace and strategy [are] evolving,” he said.

Taylor-Mountford explained that though direct methods of cyberattack are still popular – these include ransomware, or malware used to steal data, assets or cryptocurrency — there is a rising trend of events targeted at “indirect gains”, whereby attacks extort money.

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“It’s getting easier for cybercriminals to gain access to advanced tools and services. Where in the past, users kept largely to themselves, we are seeing more individuals working together and even selling their work as services.”

He said that we would likely see a rise of “DDoS-as-a-service” products become more commonplace as more hackers begin selling their tools to bad actors.

Is this the age of the state-sponsored attack?

One thing became clear this year and that’s the fact that we’re rapidly entering a new form of warfare, one that takes place not on the battlefield with guns and soldiers, but on the digital frontlines where keyboards and firewalls are the only things standing between us and the loss of valuable information. It cannot be stressed enough that the “new gold” coveted by black hats everywhere is data – data is more important than ever and it can cause harm in ways we could never have imagined.

The North Korea flag flutters next to concertina wire at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Source: Reuters

This year, we saw the rise of the state-sponsored attack, with players such as North Korea, Russia and Vietnam playing starring roles. Stories have spread across the web about a small group of actors – as well as lone wolves – or industrialized efforts to breach security solutions. Taylor-Mountford said that though state-sponsored attacks are on the rise, the likeliest targets will be companies.

“The misconception is that state-sponsored attacks happen between governments, trying to steal military, financial or political data,” he said.

“In reality, there are many organisations that hold sensitive information, with much weaker cybersecurity. These are the organisations that will be the targets of state-sponsored attacks.”

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He went on to say that digital warfare has been in the works for several years now – think of all those blockbuster films that are now focused on cybercrime – though most attacks are still pretty under the radar. Few large-scale events have been conclusively correlated with state agents, but researchers have ways of identifying certain signs.

“What we expect to see in 2018, is more of such state-sponsored attacks (such as the cyberwar between the US and North Korea) being intentionally public,” he said, adding that other countries will begin engaging in cyber-battles.

Credit cards, a chain and an open padlock is seen in front of displayed Equifax logo. Source: Reuters

Taylor-Mountford gave the example of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, whose affinity for video games may have been the inspiration behind the massive 2014 Sony Entertainment data breach. Game consoles, such as the PlayStation, store important interaction data, such as recent games played, time logs, and current activities. He also said that we’d likely see more public investment being poured into security resilience as war moves further and further into the digital landscape.

Awareness is on the rise

“What we have noticed, however, is that military powers around the world have begun to understand how important it is to invest in cyber resilience and we are seeing a new breed of soldiers that are trained specifically to defend against such threats,” he said.

“For example, Singapore’s Defence Cyber Organisation, its military’s cybersecurity arm, recently announced its Bug Bounty Programme, inviting white hat hackers to find vulnerabilities in its web-facing systems.”

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Most modern countries have already begun working on the issue in earnest – Malaysia tabled a cybersecurity law this year, while Singapore is still working on theirs. China’s controversial laws are probably the most sweeping of the Asian nations, though many more are likely to follow. However, he noted, that a lot more effort can be made with regards to the discovery and disclosure of such attacks, as well as post-event remediation.

“Of the notable data breaches we heard of this year, Yahoo, Uber, Equifax, Imgur, and even the Malaysian mobile users data breach, the one thing they all had in common was that the data breach had occurred years ago,” he said.

“Some of the exposed data were extremely sensitive and could have been easily used as a launch bed for more sophisticated attacks, yet it still took years to discover and rectify the problem. That is frankly unacceptable.”

A screenshot shows a WannaCry ransomware demand, provided by cyber security firm Symantec. Pic: Reuters

He said that more effort needed to be diverted to Internet of Things (IoT) networks and systems, especially with regards to new technologies that relate, such as autonomous vehicles. These are all networks whose exposures can and will be exploited by hackers, and which must be safeguarded if we’re to move any further in our smart city efforts.

With regards to efforts for the new year, Taylor-Mountford said that businesses and organizations should already have basic cyberdefense plans already in place and should build on top of them with good hygiene training and practical steps.

“Ultimately, even with the most robust cyber defenses, determined cybercriminals may still be able to exploit vulnerabilities to hack into the network,” he cautioned.

“Organisations need to account for this eventuality and ensure they are able to quickly detect and respond to these threats effectively.”

The post 2017: A watershed year for cybersecurity appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Despite the fact that 70 percent of health organizations in Asia Pacific are investing five to 15 percent of their budgets into cybersecurity solutions, that’s not nearly enough when compared to the fact that there is a substantial lack of actual talent to put those solutions into motion.

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According to data from Palo Alto Networks, only 78 percent of healthcare organizations have a dedicated IT security team, thus placing the industry on the bottom rung among other sectors where there is an average of 86 percent.

The biggest risk that health organizations face when it comes to security is the vulnerability of sensitive personal data. Healthcare requires medical practitioners and groups to collect lots of personal information from patients, including addresses, financial statements and details, contact numbers, and so on. The monetary loss of a data breach could be insignificant compared to the potential harms  that could be dealt to patients who have no say in how their information is protected.

“As an industry that deals with copious amounts of personal, exploitable data, it can be disastrous if this data enters the wrong hands,” said Sean Duca, Palo Alto Networks’s vice president and regional chief security officer for the Asia Pacific region, in a statement.

“Healthcare organisations need to ensure they are always updated on new security measures, and change their mindset from a reactive approach to a prevention-based approach instead, akin to how they remind patients that prevention is better than cure.”

Personal device use in the medical industry has increased the data vulnerability of patient information. Source: Shutterstock

Data breaches could also affect connected devices that patients rely on to monitor their health or keep them alive in some cases. The Palo Alto survey found that among surveyed healthcare professionals, 30 percent have said that loss of details is a huge issue, followed by fears of reputational damage (22 percent) and delays (17 percent).

There are a few reasons why healthcare organizations have performed poorly in terms of cybersecurity, the first being the legacy security systems that are in place and which are costly to replace. Palo Alto found that only 39 percent of those surveyed had admitted to reviewing security policies that are in place, despite 83 percent actually having these protocols. These numbers place the healthcare sector below the financial industry (51 percent), another sector known to maintain sensitive client data.

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Palo Alto said that the healthcare sector needs to get their devices – especially those connected to the Internet – updated with the latest firmware and security patches in order to ensure hackers can’t get into their products.

“Medical devices are notoriously vulnerable to cyberattacks because security is often an afterthought when the devices are designed and maintained by the manufacturer,” the report cautioned, adding that organizations should be prepared to organize detailed inventories  and patch management plans as part of their device maintenance strategies. 

Another issue is the fact that more patient data is being moved onto cloud and digital networks in order to cut down on physical record bloat. However, organizations also need to be aware of the need to integrate advanced security architecture within the network, in end-point devices and within the cloud itself. This three-pronged approach will be more effective against the changing nature of malware.

Sensitive patient information is a huge concern for healthcare professionals thinking about cybersecurity. Source: Shutterstock

Organizations also need to get rid of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies that allow professionals to access work-related information on-the-go, wherever they are. The fact is that not all devices will come equipped with strong enough security protocols, and the more end-points that are linked up with a system the more vulnerable its data will be.

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Palo Alto found that 78 percent of organizations allow their employees to access work information off their own personal devices such as mobile phones and personal computers, while another 69 percent are allowed to store and transfer confidential data through those same end-points.

“Practices such as BYOD and some employees’ ability to store and transfer confidential information through their personal devices put them at a higher risk of phishing attacks,” the report said.

It’s important to reckon with the fact that organizations need to take a holistic, detailed approach to combating the spread of poor cybersecurity practices. Without a top-down, wholesale approach to boosting personal data security hygiene through in-house policies and training sessions, health organizations will always have to fear for the integrity of their data networks.

The post The healthcare sector is one of the most vulnerable to cyberattacks appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

“Top-of-mind” technologies in 2007, according to PwC’s Global Digital IQ® Survey 2017, included data mining and analysis, search tech and virtual collaboration tools – today we’re seeing the emergence of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, big data frameworks and Internet of Things (IoT) devices come into mainstream thinking.

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Executives in all industries are looking for ways to integrate technology into their systems, whether they are massive corporates with legacy systems, or smaller businesses looking for cheaper ways to participate in commercial activities.

Even governments are getting in on the action. The global corporate consultancy McKinsey and Co. estimates that as much as US$1 trillion will be spent on digitizing government services and processes every year globally.

Smart city plans that have been put into play by various municipalities across the world have driven up adoption rates of tech such as IoT and big data frameworks. Most notable are efforts by Singapore’s government to push Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s “Smart Nation” vision, which outlines a future in which government and public services are connected across a digital network of sensors, interaction points and systems.

Liu Thai Ker, an architect and the former master planner of Singapore. Source: The Economist

Other significant advances include Jakarta’s minimal-tech approach to making the city more liveable through various apps, and the boundary-breaking “digital society” concept being trialled in the eastern European state of Estonia.

However, there are some who warn against the rising culture of rapid technological adoption in government and businesses that lacks a similar effort to boost good design. This phenomenon of technology hype cycles has only accelerated in recent years as the number of new innovations out there has increased. Therefore, the danger of firms adopting new, trendy technologies before a plan has been thoroughly thought out can backfire. 

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“Design must always lead technology, and technology cannot replace design,” Liu Thai Ker, an architect and the former master planner of Singapore, said to Tech Wire Asia at the recent Economist Sustainability Summit in Kuala Lumpur.

Liu – also known as the “architect of modern Singapore” – explained that though the Smart Nation concept may be the logical next step in the island nation’s long-standing relationship with technology, it’s a relationship that could never have existed without the meticulous planning mapped out by the government more than 50 years ago today.

“I’m not a technology person but I will say that the Smart Nation concept is not a replacement for good planning,” he said.

“Singapore can now talk about the Smart Nation because we have a good blend so the city will work even without technology. You have technology to enhance the functioning of the city but you cannot say that you will use technology without a good plan.”

Singapore’s government started with a meticulous plan for the country before it dove into technology. Source: Shutterstock

Liu explained that when Singapore first left the British Empire and the newly-formed Malaysia the country knew they had to transform themselves into the envy of the developing world through thorough design and savvy technological use. The government – which Liu worked closely with at the time as the state’s master planner and the CEO of the Housing and Development Board (HDB) – mapped out a plan to build a cohesive public transport system that would circumvent any potential congestion in the small landmass.

“People use public transportation because it was planned in such a way that it’s very convenient for people to use public transportation,” he said.

“That’s good design, and of course the train technology can be reduced to improve energy consumption. Those are smart trains, but you must have a good system first.”

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Liu’s words cut to the core of a central problem that many companies and businesses looking to transition into the digital future face. Too many are leaping straight into the fray with little regard to building a well-designed product.

“After you have a good design, then you can apply technology,” Liu said, adding that having good data is important to any project but without a clear design theory any project is bound to hit some kinks.

The Singaporean government began digitizing their processes from an early stage, which accounts for the country’s high rate of compute adoption, one of the highest in the world. They were a pioneer of electronic government submissions, Liu said, but they only go there by incubating their ideas for a long period of time.

What is behind SG's success in urban planning? Read this interview of Dr Liu Thai Ker, the architect of modern #SG. https://t.co/Hrq2S2uXO4

— Lee Kuan Yew School (@LKYSch) September 18, 2017

“Singapore’s government doesn’t rush into new ideas, they move it gradually and get people ready before,” he said. “If the people aren’t ready and you impose this system, there will be chaos and confusion.”

Singapore’s Smart Nation plan has come under heavy scrutiny in the three years since its implementation was announced back in 2014 by Prime Minister Lee. Critics have said that the different functions of the plan are too disparate and there are too many cooks working on separate, tangentially-connected projects that have yielded few results.

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Liu said that an integrated plan is key to building a good product as it opens you to being able to implement any kind of technology with few problems.

“When you have an integrated plan that’s based off a good, sound system, implementing smart technology can only improve the functionality and environment in a discrete manner rather than as a totality,” he said.

The post Technology can’t replace good design, says Singapore’s ex-master planner appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Every day, more and more people are logging onto the Internet, and more and more people are getting connected through smartphones, mobile tablets, and increasingly compact computers.

Everything is going digital—from the way we shop for goods and services to the way we interact with one another, and even the way we manage our health. It seems like every new day is bringing us yet another innovation, yet another new and magical way to see, experience and shape our world, which is now moving at lightning speed.

And nowhere else is that truer than in Southeast Asia, home to some of the fastest growing markets in the world, built on the backs of social media sites, unbanked populations, and pure potential.

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The entire region’s Internet economy is set to be worth US$50 billion this year alone, and four times more by 2025, according to a joint research report by Google and Temasek Holdings.

As the year winds down and we reflect on all that we’ve witnessed, we spoke to Amit Anand, the managing director and co-founder of tech-centric investment firm Jungle Ventures out of Singapore, about where the industry is headed in the near future, and which tech trends are on the rise in the coming year.

Three trends to track next year

According to Anand, there are three key things to keep an eye on: the rise of the Asian small-to medium-business (SME), the digitization of more consumer brands, and the emergence of more deep tech companies in the region.

“When we started the fund in 2012, there were maybe 200 companies that we looked at in Southeast Asia,” he said. “That number in 2016 has grown to 2,000 and if you look at it from that lens there are still a lot more startups than there is available capital.”

“This is not just one of the fastest growing Internet economies in the world, but it’s one of the best opportunities for founders and investors.”

More businesses are beginning digitize their processes as well. From financial institutions implementing more online channels to enhance user experience to real estate firms using virtual reality to bring potential to life, the brand is no longer just the packaging on a product or a billboard over the highway.

Consumer brands are now embracing more digital products or customer journeys, actively engaging with their audiences through the Internet.

Thanks to younger generations entering the ranks of the business world today, we’re also seeing more companies and traditional industries get hooked up to the Internet.

Anand said:

“The second generation is taking over, and they’re the ones who grew up with smartphones and are asking what can be brought online. The Asian SME getting more connected and digitized is a big phenomenon that I would encourage everyone to pay attention to.”

Social continues to be relevant

It’s an oft-quoted sentiment that Asians are more engaged than their Western counterparts on social media, but it’s one that has remained true over the years.

This year, We Are Social found that more than half of the region’s 645 million population are connected on some form of social media platform, while mobile and Internet penetration continues to grow steadily.

Anand said from his perspective, aside from high rates of mobile phone adoption, the impact of social media has been pretty significant not only as a connector but it’s levelled the differences between the region’s many markets. Demographics quantified in terms of gender, age and location matter so much less now.

“Thanks to social media, what used to be very different markets warranting their own strategies depending on their individual demographics, have begun behaving like a single homogenous market,” he said.

“The 24-year-old in Jakarta and the 25 year-old in Singapore are totally similar to each other in terms of behavior.”

Anand added that the growth of the homogenous customer is giving rise to industries and consumer brands specifically catering to this demographic.

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Social media is also driving the emergence and profile of Asia on a global level. The cultural power of the region—especially East Asian icons—is becoming something to be reckoned with especially in terms of artists and music.

Anand said next in line would be Asian brands and companies that may start by catering to the niche needs of the region but who will eventually go global.

One classic example, he said, is iFlix.

“I always repeat this phrase, ‘everything global is becoming local, and everything local is becoming global’. I strongly believe that companies cannot think of one or the other, it’s no longer a mutually exclusive thing,” he said.

Deep tech becomes more ubiquitous

Deep tech innovations such as artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning will continue to improve and become ever more ubiquitous in the region, Anand said

“I think what will happen in two to three years is that artificial intelligence and machine learning will become almost table stakes,” he said.

“If you’re a company — even if you’re not a tech company — if you’re not leveraging artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning, then the gap between you and the market leaders is going to grow to be much more significant.”

Anand said that Jungle Ventures is currently working on raising the level of awareness within their own portfolio about these topics, though they already have some startups with specialized focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

More companies are also likely to build out their own proprietary deep tech, even if there are B2B businesses already offering bespoke AI and machine learning services.

“If you’re a large corporate today, the battle is always how quickly you can do it, and sometimes it’s better to acquire technologies via partnerships or pure acquisitions than the time taken to innovate,” he said. “But I don’t think there can be any company in the world that does not spend their resources on AI and machine learning.”

Fintech

Southeast Asia—as has the majority of the world—has embraced the potential power of fintech and this subsector of the technology industry will continue to grow without a doubt. Anand believes there will be investment opportunities in the fintech space for the next ten years, especially since industry in Asia is largely lagging behind in both the consumer and business-facing sectors.

In the coming year, we’ll likely see more movement in the business-side fintech space, such as around blockchain technology.

A key issue to watch out for is the potential tapering off of opportunities in the region thanks to social limitations such as the largely unbanked populations of Southeast Asia. A KPMG report from 2016 found that only 27 percent of the region has access to a bank account, while various countries fall on different points of the spectrum. There could be a danger of many fintech startups producing great products but being unable to generate enough uptake to survive.

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Anand said that there will still be many opportunities in the fintech space, particularly since the region offers such a “vast opportunity that it’s hard to predict the size of it.

“You can’t only look at it through what’s happening in the developed world, and you have to believe that there will be local models and opportunities that haven’t emerged yet,” he said. “It could be twice as big as what you have seen in the developed markets, whether it’s in pure fintech or fintech in other areas such as insurance and other industries.”

The Internet of Things goes to the city

We’re seeing a huge acceleration of smart city-related technologies in cities across Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore and Jakarta whose governments have been actively exploring how technology can transform the citizen’s experience.

Anand did say that there will be lots of teething problems in the near future, so adoption of such tech will likely be slow. The Internet of Things (IoT) concept and connected devices are still crucial to many people, though we’ll likely not see mass adoption any time soon.

“I still think there are lots of problems to be solved before we get there whether it’s regards to computer vision, data, security etc.,” he said. “It’s a lot of work that still needs to happen and it rightfully has to go through the proper cycles and testing and validation before it becomes public.”

He predicted that consumer IoT is seeing the passing of its comet and “some level of disillusionment” is entering the market. There is, however, some potential for smart city and smart manufacturing companies, industries that have typically grown slowly but steadily.

A key factor here is the overall demand for automation in all industries — everyone is getting in on the action, especially in companies and cities in Asia that are adopting technology for the very first time. This means that many parties are able to immediate leapfrog over “legacy systems” that Western countries are phasing out, and jump immediate into more connected systems.

Southeast Asia Rising

Southeast Asia is a diverse region, made up of 11 different countries, and dozens of different languages, cultures and socio-economic societies. It’s not surprising then that the experience of success in the tech space is going differ wildly, with developed Singapore on one end of the spectrum and more under-developed nations like Myanmar on the other end.

That’s not to say there’s no potential in the less technologically-forward countries. Steady steps are being taken by tech-preneurs in all countries and the region is slowly emerging as a force to be reckoned with.

“Each of these countries, if not all of them, are at different maturities,” said Anand. “It’s not difficult to imagine the fact that there is a lot of entrepreneurial talent and DNA in these markets, I think it’s the environment.”

“If you look back in 2008 Singapore was just where the Philippines, and shortly these other countries will catch up. Nobody owns entrepreneurship.”

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According to Anand, a good environment for entrepreneurship to thrive is one that offers access to talent, markets and capital. Southeast Asia is lucky in the sense that it’s seen huge influx of capital, interest and money from mainland China, which is turning its considerable powers into growing the region’s tech potential.

The presence of China will be key to the success of Southeast Asia as the southern markets will have the opportunity to gain access to the billion-strong consumer population of the People’s Republic. Anand pointed to the many similarities between the consumers of both populations across many industries, suggesting that Southeast Asian companies might have an insight into China that other firms do not.

“If you look at the growth of China’s tech ecosystem, it did not happen on its own,” he said. “When a lot of the US tech community began paying more interest in China, and spent more resources in the country, that’s when the market there became what is today.”

The gleaming stars in the region are Jakarta and Singapore, according to Anand, as both cities have supplied some of the biggest volumes of entrepreneurs to date.

“Jakarta has picked up in the last two years or so and Singapore remains very strong in terms of quality and diversity of ideas,” he said.

“The good thing about SEA unlike many other markets is that we have [these] two hubs building out, which are creating good quality companies, developing good talent ecosystems and it should keep the region exciting for a long time.”

The post What tech trends are on the rise in 2018? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Social media and today’s data-driven economy has made one product more valuable than all others: the customer itself.

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Tech Wire Asia | 27 September, 2017

Our data is a huge concern for marketers and advertisers intent on getting their message to the right people, at the right time, and this is all done through data collection. Unfortunately, this all comes with a hefty price, our privacy. Despite our universal right to privacy, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the digital landscape and online businesses have changed our relationship to our data and privacy by insinuating certain platforms and services into the middle of our lives.

“After more than 15 years in the digital advertising and marketing arena, it was clear to me an inherent part of nearly all businesses in the online market is collecting and using data on users for revenue purposes,” said Miki Balin, Founder & CEO of Phantom.me, to Tech Wire Asia in an email interview.

Miki Balin, founder and CEO of Phantom.me. Source: Phantom.me

He explained that user data has become a default form of revenue for these industries, and represents a significant portion of revenues for online businesses, whether it’s through requests for sharing locations, metadata, and media.

“Every time users log into their social media or other servers, advertising and online businesses gather more information on the users,” he said. “This information is used by online businesses not only to provide services to users, but mainly to increase their marketing dollars.”

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As a result, users have become trapped in a cycle of commercialized data and sacrificed privacy that has lost its opt-in mode. Now, users have to actively seek out the off buttons for tracking features, document sharing and so on. Balin says that our increasing reliance on smartphones and mobile devices has primed us for data vulnerability, and this danger increases if we lose our devices.

“If a mobile phone falls into the wrong hands, because it’s lost or stolen, or because someone uses the phone and accidentally sees something they shouldn’t, a person’s private life is compromised,” he said. “The implications of this can even result in personal danger depending on the information accessed, and by whom.”

Yet it’s not as if the majority of us will simply enact an exodus of social media platforms, which are still hugely useful and an embedded part of our daily lives. In fact, Balin said that “this is the future”- but that doesn’t mean that we have to accept that our relationship with privacy must now be accompanied by a “nice to have” attitude rather than a “need to have” one.

The Phantom.me app is invisible to everyone but the phone user. Source: Phantom.me

“There are certain situations in everyday life, and times during the day when we don’t want to share or even connect, but rather keep our information, activities, photos, and videos private and protected,” he said.

“We believe the reason we arrived at a ‘nice to have’ attitude towards privacy is that beat by beat, we have given up on our privacy for free services and convenience.”

He explained that all the “free” and convenient services we enjoy on the Internet today – from email, to cloud storage, to social media sites – aren’t actually free, we just can’t see the costs. Instead, we’re paying for access to these services with our lives, whether it’s the explicit data that we’ve signed away with thoughtless acceptance of Terms and Conditions, or the metadata our devices give off which are accessible to everyone.

“We pay for these services with our privacy, and give away enormous amounts of data related to our personal lives: Where we work, live, and go every day, who we meet, what we do, want and like, and basically everything about us.”

“This pays for online business servers, R&D, and pizza. We as users are making businesses rich by selling ourselves.”

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There is danger in allowing our personal lives to be sold off piecemeal like this, but that doesn’t mean we have to totally disconnect from digital. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that our right to privacy can live side-by-side an open, unfettered Internet landscape, but we need the right tools to get there.

Balin founded his company Phantom.me as a way to empower Internet users with an easy, safe way to experience digital without worrying that they are compromising themselves and their privacy. Launched in conjunction with Human Rights Day, on Dec 10, the Phantom.me app leverages AES256 encryption standards to help users “disappear” whenever they need to connect.

“For all those moments you need to keep things private: browse the web without anyone tracking you, take photos no one will see except for you and keep them encrypted, chat securely with no one being able to go into your log, and use your mobile phone without anyone marking or targeting you,” he explained.

Human Rights Day: Back to the basics on privacy http://t.co/ShXp0sNIwv #privacy

— The Privacy Trap (@ThePrivacyTrap) December 13, 2013

The powerful encryption in the app makes browsing, photo-taking, communication, and file management virtually invisible to everyone but the owner of a device.

“The funny thing is, if you ask people think privacy is important, you will get an almost unanimous ‘Yes’ answer,” Balin said in response to whether people are conscious of the loss of their privacy.

“But ask about the measures that can take to achieve that, and most people will not even know where to begin.We think people are concerned about privacy, whether they are savvy about the details or not.”

Huge swathes of the population now own smartphones, but connectivity is coming at the price of our privacy. Source: Shutterstock

He said our privacy can be compromised at several sources: when data is collected, stored in transparent channels, and when our data is sold by application operators to third parties. The Phantom.me app is an attempt to stop those flows at its most efficient source by creating a single space, independent of other mobile platforms. 

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Balin said that Phantom.me takes a “zero-knowledge approach” to their users’ data by implementing overall encryption and unique passwords for every file. This means that no government or authority can compel the company to give up users’ information in order to provide more overall protection.

The app is offered at no cost to persecuted peoples across the world through the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as part of a greater effort to support and protect human rights.

“The right to privacy was important enough to be internationally recognized 70 years ago, and today it’s more relevant than ever,” said Balin said in a press statement.

“Mobile phone information inherently falls under the right to privacy, and we developed Phantom.me to be 100 percent trusted technology that keeps mobile phone activity and data within complete control of phone owners.”

The post Digital privacy: Phantom.me help users become ‘invisible’ online appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Yet the change has to come with purpose and a vision otherwise technology is becoming buzzier than ever and corporations eager to stave off the oncoming storm are adopting digital faster than ever before, sometimes without discerning the real needs of their company beforehand.

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Innovation is a double-edged sword – a change could push your company fast into the future, but innovation also demands constant revisiting. A company intent on moving into the technological future has to keep their eye on constantly updating themselves for the future. This kind of mindset will be crucial in the years to come, but for many companies, it could result in panic-adoption mode, where each and every technology is necessary (even if it isn’t).

In other cases, some technology companies and startups have opened their doors with what they might think as the tech product that will launch them into wild success. However, few companies ever reach the echelons as Uber with that kind of frenzy, and many more still fall out before they can even turn a profit. 

Danny Ing’s Cin7 is the world’s only full-service supply chain solution. Source: Cin7

“A lot of people see an opportunity and they run for it. They don’t see that [an idea might be] quite simple, they don’t see where markets are going to change,” said New Zealand-based Danny Ing, the founder and chief architect of inventory software firm Cin7, to Tech Wire Asia in a phone interview.

“[They create] a product for where the market is now, not where it’s going to be in the future. For those in IT, there are two issues: finding the problem, and then understanding how it’s going to change in five years.”

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Ing said that his company, starting with its first iteration as Datum Connect in 2002, has embodied this philosophy of reinvention based off the needs of the market. Ing’s time in IT started with content management systems under a company called eVentures, during which time Ing helped equip Auckland Savings Bank (ASB) with a more efficient content manager.

Later, he would go on to found Datum Connect, a web design company that would later spin off into an Internet marketing and e-commerce services.

“The first one was simple content management company, but the second [change] was probably the hardest for me,” he said. “People wanted crazy stuff, they want to be unique, they wanted moving stuff and animation — it was terrible!

“I tell people that the Internet is like Madonna, you have to reinvent yourself every four to five years,” he joked.

When you’re a crab in a crab bucket, you’ve got to do something different to stand out. Source: Shutterstock

At the heart of it, Ing said, was an understanding that the company had to change and adapt to the new demands of the marketplace. His feeling of being a “crab in a crab bucket” pushed him to continue changing what the company was doing in order to remain relevant in an ever-changing Internet landscape.

That was the ethos that drove the launch of his current company, Cin7, along with a goal his team pursued with single-minded determination: arriving on the shores of San Francisco.

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“We called it the ‘Road to San Francisco,’” he explained. Cin7 got their big break when the accounting firm Xero arrived in New Zealand. Xero, which has offices in London, San Francisco and Sydney looked like their big break, and it just so happened that they needed help building inventory and payroll add-ons to their software.

“These were the phases that we had and we learnt as we went along. When you feel like a crab in a crab bucket, you feel like you need to do something else and when you’re an Internet company, obviously you have to stay on the Internet.”

“Since we were an e-commerce company, we understood the pains of inventory, so we thought yeah, we could look at this inventory thing,” he said.

He and his team began brainstorming to discover what an inventory system would look like five to 10 years from, and they listed seven crazy things that could happen thanks to the Internet. It formed the basis for their current company, as well as its name: “Cin7” is an amalgamation of the phrase “Connected Inventory” and the seven crazy things.

Ing says that his company is always reinventing itself. Source: Cin7

“We wanted to build a product for the market that is now and you could say that it’s now omni-channel businesses that sell anywhere in the world,” he said.

This forward-thinking attitude to innovation has carried Ing through his career and has roots in his own family background. His parents fled with their family from Vietnam, and Ing became one of the infamous “boat people” whose plight captured the planet’s attention in the 70’s. When his family arrived in Rotorua, New Zealand, Ing’s parents started up a Chinese takeaway restaurant which lent him the work ethic and forward-thinking philosophy that drives him today.

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The philosophy of working your niche that is evident in Cin7 is an ongoing theme in Ing’s life. “You can’t be good at everything,” Ing said, further explaining that the most successful Internet companies today all stay in their lanes and outdo all the competition without having too broad a service base.

“If you’re an accounting system, then you’re an accounting system, which is why Salesforce did so well,” he said. “They’re a CRM, and you can’t be an accounting system and be the number one CRM system in the world.”

Instead, he said, Cin7 ran with their complex inventory problem and stuck with it to become the world’s only full-service supply chain solution. Cin7 made it in San Francisco after years of working at it, and the majority of its customer base comes from the United States and Australia.

And true to its ethos, Cin7 is experimenting with the future of its own tech: automation.

The post The key to Internet success? Keep reinventing your business appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Despite the fact that the idea that “demographics is destiny” has been a highly prized truism in the marketing world for a long time now, Sajith said that the tried and tested way of created directed, personalised advertising has to change to accommodate the increased amount of data that we now have at our fingertips.

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Tech Wire Asia | 30 November, 2017

The more information we can glean from our audiences, the better we can get at targeting specific, impactful content at them. However, this new way of thinking has also revealed the faultlines in using demographic boundaries to make decisions about the kinds of ads we’re sending in different directions.

Audiences are far more segmented beyond the traditional ideas of thinking about demographics, according to Sajith. It has become reductive to think about women as the people who love cooking and fashion, and gaming as the domain of kids. In fact, YouTube has found that more than 40 percent of all viewers of cooking content are men, while gaming shows have a 30 percent viewership aged 35 years and above. Men make up 55 percent of all consumers of fashion-related video content.

Source: YouTube

“If advertisers stay limited to demographic targeting alone, they will be limited by the assumptions of age and gender, and miss out on a big share of their potential audience,” Sajith said in a statement.

Those internal numbers from YouTube are suggesting that thinking about audiences and how to target them through traditional modes is becoming increasingly reductive. Meanwhile, the Internet is driving a desire for more individualised experiences while take into account each person’s personal tastes and wants.

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It’s for this reason that Sajith says that demographics has to give way to “intent marketing” which makes use of intent signals to appeal to their audiences. Intent marketing essentially buys into what people already want—they already want a particular product or are primed to accept a certain message that the marketer can then tap into.

YouTube and online content platforms are particularly positioned to take advantage of that as they are far more user-centric than television channels. Users actively engage with creators and build relationships with them by subscribing to them.

Source: YouTube

The very fact that users are subscribing to a particular creator is already an indication of a kind of person they are. Furthermore, certain YouTubers already have a key advantage: they already own viewers’ attention even if they don’t have a wide reach, but attention is far more important.

Attention can signal to brands a present “intent” from consumers that they’re actively engaged with the content they are watching, and consumers who have been reached through “intent marketing” register 20 percent more ad recall and 50 percent higher brand awareness than those found through demographic targeting.

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Creators can identify intent through different methods, including using signals or “affinities” within certain consumers that can indicate who they are as a person and what they’re looking for. For instance, the types of films you enjoy, the kinds of things you’re searching for on the Internet, can all serve to tell brands who you are and what kind of products you want or need.

“The content already considers them as a demographic, it’s already been packaged for them so the move to buy these products is an easy one,” Sajith said.

He gave the example of a Celcom Ramadan-themed takeover of YouTube, geared to boost publicity for their EasyPhone product. By packaging it with the feel-good thematics of a festive ad common in Malaysian culture, Celcom was able to tap into a demographic already primed for their message.

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As a result, Celcom saw a 337 percent rise in EasyPhone signups, and a 13 percent rise in ad recall. About 8.3 million people watched this four-minute ad, a feat that would be otherwise unimaginable for television where a 30-second slot could be tiring.

Sajith said that marketers shouldn’t be fooled by the power of intent marketing just because certain ads don’t appeal to you individually that doesn’t mean that someone else out there – perhaps someone celebrating a holiday you don’t – isn’t responding to it positively.

Ads crafted with intent advance – not interrupt – your agenda as a consumer, he said, because you are interested in something, you have a desire to learn more about something if you have an ad that responds to that desire.

The post Demographics targeting is dead, according to this YouTube exec appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The company will onboard Kenny Tan, a local producer and filmmaker as the head of Viddsee Studios, a content creation branch.

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Samantha Cheh | 3 October, 2017

Viddsee launched in 2013 as a streaming and content platform for some of the best short videos from all over the Asean region. Co-founder Derek Tan told Tech Wire Asia in a recent interview that the company was already working with some filmmakers on commissions, though the majority of the platform was still focused on supply and distribution. The company’s new studio will be producing content for client brands and media organizations, as well as the everyday viewer.

This latest partnership is the logical extension of the company’s recent work, and IMDA will likely be able to capitalize on Viddsee’s one billion strong audience base to promote more Singaporean film.

“In line with our mission of empowering storytellers, this is an exciting evolution as we move from curation to creation, for both our company and community of content creators,” said one of Viddsee’s co-founder and CEO Ho Jia Jian in a statement.

Head of Viddsee Studios, Kenny Tan. Source: Viddsee

“With Kenny’s wealth of experience as a digital media producer, we believe there will be greater collaboration and opportunity for content creators to tell more stories.”

The platform’s original content studio will likely benefit from the four years of operation that Viddsee already has under their belt. The company already knows what people want to see, and what a winning formula looks like, making it an appealing product for brands looking for content.

Today, video is everywhere and media outlets are investing heavily in the medium. Viddsee’s offer of a video production feature will likely be uber-appealing to any organization unwilling to set up their own production arm, and could prove to be a much-needed player in Singapore’s media landscape.

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That data aspect will likely also be a win for the company itself. Having a bespoke studio will allow the company to further monetize what is currently a free-to-watch platform through brand partnerships. The company has already begun producing content for brands in the last year, and the studio will further enable that.

The partnership with IMDA will start with five new, original series that are slated for a 2018 launch. The company had already launched a partnership with the Singaporean media statutory body where they curated a Singapore-focused playlist of films. This partnership is the next step.

Viddsee championed short video content to appeal to viewers on the go. Source: Junpinzon/Shutterstock

A statement from Viddsee noted that the original content will be imbued with “public service values”, and could prove especially effective for Singapore’s government who takes not only a policy lead in the country, but also a heavy hand in shaping the nature of its society. The series will be available on Viddsee’s platform.

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IMDA’s director of public service media and assessment, Dorothy Lai, said that the video content will be used to create “even more impactful stories”, while Viddsee Studios’ head Kenny Tan said that data analytics would play a significant role in shaping the content produced through the content arm.

“We’ll be empowering this creativity upon the company’s data-driven approach in distribution within the digital space, to further elevate local stories for a global audience,” he said.

“Storytelling today is an art as much as it is a science. IMDA’s partnership with Viddsee enables content creators to combine the art of creative storytelling techniques with audience insights powered by data science,” said Lai.

The post Short video startup Viddsee launches bespoke content studio appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The rise of e-commerce is contributing to a tangential trend, however, that is the increasing rate of online fraud during credit card transactions.

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Tech Wire Asia | 9 November, 2017

According The Nilson Report, 2015 recorded as much as US$21.64 billion in losses thanks to credit card fraud, marking more than a 20 percent increase compared to 2014. That number is continuing to rise, with 2017 losses forecasted to amount to as much as US$27.69 billion.

The ACI Worldwide Global Consumer Fraud Survey 2016 found that 30 percent of consumers worldwide have experienced some kind of credit card fraud in the last five years. The increase in frequency is largely attributed to “risky behavior” such as poor personal device security and increased digitization of online transactions.

“It’s no surprise that there is a direct correlation between fraud and lower consumer trust and card loyalty, including a primary contributor toward ‘back of wallet’ behavior,” said Ben Knieff, senior research analyst, Aite Group, who authored the 2016 document.

Shoppers reach for retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Source: Reuters

“And as this data illustrates, it’s more critical than ever for financial institutions to implement and actively maintain effective fraud prevention solutions that address fraud, security and customer experience needs.”

Things get even more dicey when you factor in the skyrocketing popularity of the Cyber Monday sales, which are set to overtake Black Friday revenues. A Deloitte report on the sales noted that though many shoppers will want to participate in in-person shopping during Black Friday, the Cyber Monday sales will be well-attended, with as many as 72 percent of respondents saying that they plan on shopping online.

The rise of e-commerce is going to adversely contribute to the levels of card fraud, said an executive from analytics software firm FICO, whichprovides solutions to help financial institutions mitigate cases of fraud and reduce losses

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“Black Friday and Cyber Monday will probably see record levels of card fraud this year,” said TJ Horan, vice president, who oversees FICO’s fraud solutions, in a statement.

“If you’re getting ready to start your holiday shopping, you should expect that criminals are out to get your money, and take a few preventative steps. It pays to keep your eyes open at ATMs, to monitor your purchases at least weekly, and to make sure your card issuer has the right contact info for you.”

According to Horan, the rise of e-commerce sales and card-payment options, has boosted instances of card fraud as it widens the pool of potential victims that fraudsters can take advantage of.

Shoppers are seen walking past the electronic billboard at Piccadilly Circus, showing retail adverts incuding one for ‘Black Friday’ in London, Britain. Source: Reuters

“Fraudsters will continue to find vulnerabilities and exploit weaknesses of unsuspecting consumers,” he said to Tech Wire Asia in an email interview.

“Naturally, as more people shop online, they have more targets to victimise – all they have to do is wait for who falls into their traps. For example, they can send consumers emails on Black Friday deals, with click through links that can actually be hoaxes to facilitate information phishing.”

Horan said that while some physical stores in Asia will offer Black Friday promotions, the bulk will come from online platforms. This will boost the occurrence of “card not present” (CNP) payments, which will in turn raise the instances of CNP fraud. CNP fraud is more “likely to occur more than other types of fraud such as ATM fraud,” he said.

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Tech Wire Asia | 22 November, 2017

Is there something specific about Black Friday and Cyber Monday that makes fraud especially attractive compared to the average day of the week? After all, if card fraud is on the rise it’s hardly right to expect that it will spike specifically on these two days of the year.

Horan draws comparisons to the high level of risk for consumers during the Singles’ Day sales, which blasted all across Asia last week. He says that even with Singles’ Day, Black Friday promotions will likely still be conducted by Asian platforms as part of a continuous roll-out of holiday-related shopping extravaganzas that are looking to set retailers’ books for the rest of the year. Horan said that in Southeast Asia, Google searches for “Black Friday” have surged over the last five years, especially in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

“It also helps that Black Friday is perfectly timed – just about a month away from Christmas, which is when people start shopping for presents,” he said.

People shop in Macy’s Herald Square during early opening for the Black Friday sales in Manhattan, New York, U.S. Source: Reuters

He said that these shopping events are a commonly used “marketing tactic” that retailers use to promote as “the best day of the year to get the biggest bargains”, a lure that will continue to draw consumers straight into a mad rush of shopping. The huge volume of shoppers logging onto sites and keying in their card numbers is the precise problem when it comes to fraud, as it places a huge burden on credit card companies, while opening up the flood gates for fraudsters.

“With the high volume of transactions as shoppers hope to clinch the best deals and cost savings, credit card companies may struggle to keep pace in monitoring fraudulent transactions if they don’t have proper fraud blocking strategies in place.”

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On the topic of marketing tactics, many retailers have taken to offering multiple avenues for consumers to access the sale. Black Friday and Cyber Monday contests and lucky draws are a popular strategy, and it’s primed for hackers to attack because these games usually require participants to willingly fill in forms with sensitive information, ranging from phone numbers to addresses and identification numbers.

“If third parties can lure consumers into submitting these pieces of information, there’s a risk of using such information for phishing purposes,” he said.

“There have also been fraudulent Black Friday apps that masquerade well-known brands to spread malware, steal customer credentials and phish for sensitive data.

“Cybercriminals may also modify and use variations of a known company’s Internet address to lure consumers into visiting these imitated sites, where they key in their card details in exchange for “goods” they wish to purchase.”

The post Fraud cases expected to soar over Black Friday shopping weekend appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.