Brazilian cyber crime
Date: April 25, 2006Source: northjersey.com
The rapid rise of the global economy is reshaping the way New Jersey companies do business, creating new opportunities and challenges. This weekly column explores the growing ties between Garden State businesses and the rest of the world.
Edison company helping police combat cyber crime in Brazil
George Waller looks at the rising tide of Brazilian cyber crime and sees green.
He recently returned from a six-day trip to a security conference in S㯠Paulo, where he promoted anti-hacking software made by his employer, Edison-based StrikeForce Technologies.
Three months ago, Brazilian police arrested 41 hackers and accused them of stealing $4.7 million from 200 accounts in six banks.
Authorities said the gang stole account numbers and passwords with a computer virus carried on e-mail.
The crime is typical of the cyber identity theft that occurs the world over, especially in developed countries such as Brazil, said Waller, a StrikeForce vice president.
"They're a little behind the U.S. in fighting these problems," he said.
StrikeForce showed Brazilian executives security software with 10 different ways to authenticate the user's identity -- from passwords to fingerprint readers and smart cards.
In one method, the software calls the user's cellphone and allows access to the computer only when a password is punched into the phone.
The company will start several Brazilian pilot programs next week, Waller said.
New Jersey one of just 2 states to bar state work abroad
New Jersey continues to make its mark in the offshoring world.
The state is one of just two -- the other is Arizona -- to prohibit contractors from doing state work abroad, a report by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found.
The year-old New Jersey law requires contractors to do state government work in the United States, except when a vendor can't be found to do it domestically. At the time, 31 states were considering similar laws in response to public outcry over U.S. jobs being shipped abroad.
But "while numerous actions have been proposed at the state and federal levels to limit offshoring by government agencies, few restrictions exist," a recent report by the GAO found.
New Jersey state government now does little offshoring, the state Treasury Department says. As directed by the anti-offshoring law, the Treasury studied 3,160 state contracts, most of them for services, spokesman Tom Vincz said. Work is done abroad in just 22 contracts -- all of which were signed before the law took effect, Vincz said.
The work includes data entry of accident reports done for the Transportation Department in the Philippines. Data entry for a Medicaid program is done in Calcutta by a contractor working for the Human Services Department.
And workers at unspecified locations around the world give online and call-center help for computer software to employees at the state Labor and Public Safety departments.
Mahwah firm's medical system approved for use in Russia
DOBI Medical International Inc. has taken its fight against breast cancer from Mahwah to Moscow.
The Bergen County company said last week that its ComfortScan system has been approved by Russian health authorities for use in their country.
ComfortScan technology identifies tumor angiogenesis, the process in which the body creates tiny blood-filled capillaries to support the growth and development of cancerous cells, the company said. DOBI officials believe the scan -- used in conjunction with mammography -- can help identify breast cancer.
The company is conducting clinical trials to get approval for the system's use in the U.S. and China.
Have any news or comments for Going Global? Contact Hugh R. Morley at (201) 646-4318, or e-mail [email protected].
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