The Swiss Company That Says It Wants To Stave Off Global Hackers Attacking Latin America

Slowly but aggressively, the use of mobile data, messaging and search engines have exploded in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2019, Latin America and the Caribbean became the fourth-largest regional online market in terms of users, trailing only Asia, Europe and Africa. South America was the subregion with the most significant internet penetration rate, with 72 percent of the population accessing the internet.

By 2020, the average internet usage in Latin America was forecast by Statista to be more than three hours per person per day, most of that consisting of mobile devices and social media. On average, 81 percent of internet users in Latin America were using a social network.

Meta Platforms Inc.’s META WhatsApp, by a large margin, is the most popular messaging service in Latin America, followed by its Facebook Messenger platform. Snap Inc.’s SNAP Snapchat is growing in popularity in Colombia.  

The growth in mobile and messaging use in Latin America may also highlight the lack of an impressive cybersecurity foundation to protect users and their businesses. According to a study by lookingglasscyber.com, as the region's economies become more technically adept, cyber security practices are failing to keep up with advancements in digitization. Cybercrime, cyber espionage and hacktivism have all reportedly targeted Latin America.

According to cybersecurity-insiders.com, Colombia is one of the top five countries most attacked by cyber espionage, with Mexico not far behind. Insightcrime.org reports that online scams, ransomware attacks and phishing email schemes increased in Latin America during the pandemic, exposing the dangers hackers pose to people, banks and governments.

Fighting Cyber Espionage

That issue has perhaps become an opportunity for secure communications companies like Switzerland’s Sekur Private Data Ltd. SWISF, which has announced another entry into Latin America.

The company is restarting its presentation and training program for its Colombia, Peru and Mexico distributor Tasloko S.L., which initially signed an agreement with Sekur in May 2020. Unfortunately, like many ventures around the world, the company says that collaboration was stalled because of COVID-19 in Spain and Latin and Central America, preventing the operations from starting.

Tasloko S.L. (Micronet) is a Spain-based company with operations and distributors in Spain, Colombia, Panama, Peru, Mexico and Guatemala, totaling over 2,000 resellers. The two companies have just reignited their sales, beginning with Colombia and soon to be followed by Panama, Peru, Chile and Mexico.

Central and Latin America, with a population of over 500 million, are increasingly important emerging markets for Sekur. The company has translated its Swiss solutions to Spanish and is leveraging its work in Mexico through America Movil SAB de CV AMX.

“Our SekurMessenger seems to be of very particular interest in Colombia as there is no other solution that is private and secure enough for businesses for their messaging and with all other countries to follow in the coming months in our efforts to protect their valuable data and communications,” Alain Ghiai, CEO of Sekur Private Data said.

Sekur is offering SekurMessenger and SekurMail as part of a bundle of email, messaging and file transfer services in one application. The bundle includes the company's latest SekurMail technology, which it says provides for proprietary anti-phishing and a privacy feature called SekurSend® that lets a user send an email to any recipient, whether they use Sekur or not. The email never leaves Sekur's encrypted email servers based in Switzerland.

Sekur's data privacy solutions are hosted in Switzerland, protecting user data from outside data intrusion requests. In Switzerland, the right to privacy is guaranteed in the Swiss Federal Constitution.

For more information about Sekur, visit www.sekur.com.

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