Nexllence has been on the domestic market for about six months. The brand, belonging to the Glintt universe, results from the evolution of the area of application consulting and infrastructure.
With a strong performance in the health sector, David Faustino, Manager Director of Nexllence powered by Glintt, warns of the creation and/or intensification of a set of challenges brought by the pandemic in terms of cybersecurity. In addition, it highlights the drug traceability project, and the company has developed a component for Sifarma software.
Interview with David Faustino:
What led Glintt to bet on the development of Nexllence and how does it evaluate the performance and evolution of this business unit?
Glintt has long understood that society’s digitisation movement will continue to accelerate, and that it will be increasingly intense and disruptive. This movement accelerates another, that of globalization, which was already underway.
All this change requires very specialized technological skills, constantly updating and able to transfer know-how between different industries. That’s why he created Nexllence, Glintt’s digital transformation brand, which creates technology solutions tailored to each organization, allowing them to implement (through technology) their business strategies, differentiated from competitors.
Although Nexllence is only six months old, it drinks aknow-howof 20 years of Glintt technology, which brings together 300 technology experts, and which in this period has grown at double-digit rates.
In a year of challenges, what impacts on cybersecurity and information security, particularly at the level of the health sector (hospital units, health, laboratories, pharmacies…) brought and/or intensified by the pandemic?
In terms of cybersecurity, the pandemic has created and/or intensified a number of challenges:
- An intensification of distance medicine, in which devices (mobile phones, computers ,etc.. ) of patients and physicians began to be used in medical actsandtherefore began to potentially expose private and confidential information;
- Increased pressure on hospital facilities, resulting in overloading of networks and systems and a greater number of users, increasing the likelihood of cyber-attacks motivated by humanerror;
- Tremendous pressure from hackers on pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies and supply chain for information theft (about vaccines, among others), in order to disruption the distribution chain or to demand payment of stolen information.
Do you consider that national entities, public bodies and companies are prepared to respond effectively to potential cybersecurity threats? How do you assess your degree of preparedness, maturity, responsiveness and resilience?
Total protection against cyberattacks does not exist. Some of the world’s most important public and private organizations have reported many cases of cyberattacks that have been targeted, with some of the most media cases in recent months occurring in the U.S. government, with attacks perpetrated through software from Microsoft or Solar Winds.
This is a very real threat to the population, the economy or even global security, it is honest to note that cybersecurity is now a theme in the agendas of business leaders and managers, who are making a path of improvement.
Without being able to mention all the entities that have an important role in this area, in Portugal it is worth highlighting the role of the National Cybersecurity Center, which has trained thousands of cybersecurity professionals, produced a national framework of reference in Cybersecurity (which should be adopted by private companies and public entities) and that maintains active a Cybersecurity observatory that has had a proactive attitude of information on cyberattacks worldwide.
Despite this, there is still much to improve, due to essentially two factors: (1) cyberattacks are by their very innovative nature and today based on cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and social engineering, which requires that cybersecurity also evolve very rapidly and (2) cybersecurity requires investment capacity,which is often channeled for other purposes until arelevant cyberattack takes place. Unfortunately we have often seen that investment is only made available for cybersecurity after a successful attack, and so the cost is much higher.
From the point of view of cybersecurity in the health sector, what project developed by Nexllence would highlight and what added value were achieved by the entity?
I would like to save a project in the area of drug traceability. We have developed a component for Sifarma (Glintt software for Farmacias)to implement the rules of thetraceability policy. This action was aimed at (andenabling u)to ensure that each package of medicinal productdispensed was validated at European level against a database of manufacturers, enabling the identification of untracked drug packaging. Although this is not a visible solution for any of the 447 million citizens of the European Union, this system ensures the safety of the population and confidence in the health system.
Nexllence recently announced the bet on the Spanish market. What led the company to bet on this market and how does its evolution?
Glintt’s business units that merged to create Nexllence had been operating in Spain for more than 10 years, and interestingly in one of the most competitive and complex sectors in terms of information systems: telecommunications.
Having two of spain’s four largest communications operators as our customers, Spain’s choice to open a permanent operation was natural and very aligned with Glintt’s overall strategy, which has an important operation in this geography.
After six months, we have worked with important customers in the area of energy and consumer products, and we have strong growth prospects in the logistics and financial services sector.
For this growth we plan to hire 60 people in the next three years, a team that will be reinforced by people working from the competence centers we have in Portugal.
Source: Security Magazine
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