March 10, 2014 — 13:48 GMT (06:48 PDT)
Storage and data giant EMC has announced its latest investment in Brazil with the launch of a facility dedicated to analysis and reporting of online fraud across Latin America.
The new anti-fraud command center will commence operations this month and will support the company’s existing sites in the United States and Israel. The site is intended to provide more thorough analysis and cybercrime detection for EMC’s Latin American clients.
When commenting on the reasons to set up the new center – which will be based in the São Paulo countryside city of Campinas, one of Brazil’s main tech hubs – EMC cites its own research, which suggests that some 450,000 cyberattacks were recorded in 2013 that resulted in fraud losses of $5.9bn worldwide, with Colombia and Brazil being on the list of top ten countries targeted with phishing attacks last year.
According to the company’s data, Colombia suffered 43 percent of all attacks in Latin America, with total losses estimated to reach $95m. Threats in Brazil represent 39 percent of all occurrences in the region, with losses of $86m.
While the company is not disclosing the exact investment in the new anti-fraud center, EMC announced last year that it would invest R$100m ($42.8m) in a Big Data research center in Rio de Janeiro over a five-year period.
The investment in Latin America makes sense, considering recent financial results showing that EMC’s BRIC business was the group’s best-performing geography, with 17 percent growth in the last quarter of 2013.