Luxoft Holding, Inc., a leading provider of software development services and innovative IT solutions to a global client base, has announced the opening of a new office in Warsaw, Poland.

Increasing demand for the Company’s services in Warsaw, particularly from international banks, and access to high-caliber IT talent in Poland drove the decision to open the new office. In particular, soaring implementations of Murex technology systems into global banks from Poland led to the number of Murex specialists employed by Luxoft in Warsaw to increase fivefold in the last 12 months. 

Luxoft also supports the financial processes of global automotive manufacturers from its Warsaw location. This is one of the fastest growing areas of the business globally. The new office should help ensure Luxoft continues to meet both the strong demand for advanced financial services technology in Central and Eastern Europe and puts the company in a position to capitalize on the growth opportunities in other industries from Poland.

“Warsaw specialists are in charge of IT support for international platforms which enable the annual trading of billions of dollars,” said Wojciech Mach, Managing Director Central Europe at Luxoft. “These advanced services are an important part of Excelian Luxoft’s services, and rely on specific know-how and experience in cooperating with financial markets.”

Luxoft has successfully operated in Poland for seven years and works with 15 international companies from its base in Warsaw alone. Since opening its first office in Krakow, Poland in 2010, Luxoft expanded quickly and now operates in four locations across the country – Krakow, Warsaw, Wroclaw and Tri-city. The new office is located on the 36th floor of the Warsaw Spire – the highest office building in the city

“A great deal of clients choose to work with Luxoft in Poland because of the high quality of services we provide and the people we hire. Together with other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland provides access to world class software engineers that keep clients coming back to work with us,” concluded Przemysław Berendt, Global Marketing Vice President at Luxoft.

When we think of start-up scenes, we might think of bustling world cities such as London, New York, Melbourne and Hong Kong as leaders of the pack.  However, an unexpected country tops the charts: Latvia.

A recent study by the World Economic Forum showed that Latvia had more early-stage entrepreneurial activity than anywhere in Europe.  But why?

Normund Kvilis, CEO of new Latvian start-up DigiPulse (https://www.digipulse.io/), thinks the answers lie in the country’s unique response to economic hardship.  “Before the financial crisis in 2008, Latvia, along with the other two ‘Baltic Tiger’ states, had been through years of booming success.  However, we then experienced one of the sharpest initial economic contractions in the world and were slow to recover.

“In one year, unemployment jumped from 7% to 22.8% and numerous businesses went bankrupt – as a result many Latvian people didn’t want to rely on an employer to provide for them anymore.  Collectively, we turned to start-ups.

“The Latvian government has recognised and embraced this, and has created an environment for start-ups and microbusinesses which is among the most competitive in the EU.  In 2017 it has gone even further and implemented an act which grants enterprise tax reductions of up to 100%.”

DigiPulse, the company that Normunds Kvilis co-founded with Dmitry Dementyev-Dedelis, provides the world’s first digital ‘vault’, which can be used to store digital assets such as files and cryptocurrencies, and passes these on to a loved one if the owner passes away. 

DigiPulse is currently hosting a token sale which has passed the equivalent of $1million of funding – arguably the first firm in Latvia to do so.

Normunds Kvilis continues, “The idea behind DigiPulse is that we are addressing one of the major flaws that cryptocurrencies themselves have, namely that losing access to your digital wallet will lead to you losing your assets.

“Cryptocurrency wallets consist of a public address and a password. If you lose either one of them, your assets are stuck in internet limbo.  We offer, firstly, a way for you to pass your assets on, with an inheritance service, and secondly, a failsafe solution – in case your PC gets lost or your house burns down.  You can still access everything that you have stored. 

“The system is based on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which are put together on top of our own blockchain which encrypts and stores the data in small chunks so it is practically impossible to hack.

“We are seeing a great deal of support from the crypto community because they are in need of a product like this.  As people begin to use cryptocurrencies for a broader range of applications and hold significant crypto assets for investment, we must ensure that their families receive their belongings if the worst does happen.”

If the customer chooses to remain anonymous, there is no requirement for them to share their details and the system can work by tracking activity of their digital wallet.

The DigiPulse team is largely based in Riga, Latvia, with connections around the globe.

DigiPulse is currently hosting a token sale which has passed the equivalent of $1million of funding.  The token sale will continue until 31 October 2017.

DigiPulse tokens (DGPT) are sold at a fixed price (with additional tier bonus rewards) of 0.004 ETH (1 ETH = 250 DGPT).

DigiPulse website: https://www.digipulse.io/

A short interview with Normunds Kvilis from a recent ICO event in London with Wirex’s Raphael Shalaby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AMbsH9aZw8&t=164s

 ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced support for the European Payments Council (EPC) SEPA Instant rulebook standard ISO 20022 within its Universal Payments (UP) solutions portfolio, including  UP Immediate Payments and UP Real-Time Payments. With this support, ACI enables payment service providers to connect to any domestic or pan-European EPC based instant payments scheme.

Financial institutions in Europe are currently preparing for the launch of several domestic and pan-European schemes, including the EBA RT1 pan-European SEPA SCT Inst scheme which is due to go live next month. Many payment service providers are scrutinizing the network options available to them, as they try to decide which schemes they need to join to offer reach and ubiquity to their customers.

ACI Worldwide is offering all financial institutions and PSPs a multi-scheme solution based on a standard European SEPA Inst gateway that can be quickly modified to suit the requirements of any domestic or pan-European instant scheme. The ACI gateway can support the connectivity and functional requirements of any real time CSM, including ECB TIPS, EBA RT1, Equens and STET.  It can easily support other non-Euro based schemes in development, such as Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.

In addition, ACI was recently certified for SIAnet network services, used to connect to various pan-European schemes including EBA RT1. The validation criteria used are defined by SIAnet according to their specific standards for managing the participants within their network.

Currently ACI is supporting Rabobank, a Dutch-based global multinational bank, which utilizes UP Immediate Payments, to move forward with their implementation of the Equens SEPA Inst scheme.

Last week, ACI announced a strategic agreement with STET, one of the leading European CSMs, to deliver an end-to-end real-time payments solution to payment services providers (PSPs) across Europe.

Barry Kislingbury, Director Solution Consulting Immediate Payments, ACI Worldwide comments:

“ACI’s standard European SEPA Inst gateway offers the utmost flexibility for our customers as the implementation will not be dependent on the availability of an individual instant scheme. Our approach offers payment service providers the opportunity to real time enable their payments platform now—and to add connectivity to any instant scheme as they become available.”

“We not only provide our customers with a technical solution, but also payment processing functionality, guidance on compliance, fraud, scheme rules, testing and certification, as well as support throughout the complex on-boarding process.”

Compass Plus, an international provider of retail banking and electronic payments software to processors and financial institutions, has been officially added to the National Card Payment System (NSPC) list of approved ACS / 3DS Server vendors that provide authentication software for MirAccept 2.0.

MirAccept 2.0, a secure e-commerce platform, was launched by the NSPC in August 2017. It is built based on the latest 3D Secure 2.0.1 standard from the EMVCo consortium, but without dependence on the patents of these international payment systems.

Compass Plus was amongst the first vendors to achieve acquiring and issuing certification for the new payment system from the NSPC and is now one of the first for MirAccept 2.0. Center-invest Bank, Moscow Industrial Bank and a number of additional Compass Plus customers are currently preparing to launch pilot projects using this new platform.

“Participation in this project is an opportunity for Compass Plus to be among the first to support the newest standards in e-commerce, to develop our existing systems and implement new products and services,” said Alexei Parshin, Chief Payments Technology Officer at Compass Plus.

“In the development and implementation of remote banking channels, the challenge lies in prioritising information security while ensuring ease and convenience in using electronic payment methods,” said Yuri Bogdanov, Director for Innovation at Center-invest Bank. “The sophisticated development of MirAccept 2.0 is a unique combination of increased payment security with a reduced test load on the customer. Participating in the pilot launch of such technology is a great honour for us, and we are grateful to Compass Plus for supporting its implementation.”

Leading travel technology provider, CodeGen, will be offering on-stand demonstrations of two of its new cutting-edge platforms at this year’s WTM. The team’s experts will offer insight into its industry-leading software innovations, TravelBox Surf and FLAIR, and how they can raise their commercial potential.

FLAIR is a brand new Artificial Intelligence (AI) product framework. Underpinned by a semantic knowledge base that uses sophisticated information extraction to mine online data, FLAIR helps travel operators leverage every byte of data to uncover insights – from customer feedback and client profiles to competitor price comparisons – that can be used to personalise product offerings and increase conversion rates. By utilising the FLAIR framework for personalisation, travel intelligence and revenue management travel operators can ensure they offer right product to the right person at the right price.

Already used by some of the global travel industry giants, TravelBox Surf is a web-enabling tool kit with a customisable widget framework and enhanced cache technology for superfast online search. The multi-device solution also enables product aggregation at point of sale, personalised displays, natural language search and sophisticated configuration tools. Surf also includes a “Manage My Booking” portal that enables customer self-service for actions such as upselling, amendments and payments. 

Both TravelBox Surf and FLAIR embody CodeGen’s ongoing commitment to research and development and have been designed to integrate seamlessly with its signature, state-of-the-art reservation platform, TravelBox.

When cyberhackers are able to penetrate the world's most heavily protected data centers, it becomes clear that cybersecurity is now more important than ever. Unfortunately, cybercriminals seem unstoppable, breaching and stealing highly sensitive data, almost at will.

To address this significant challenge, the country of Luxembourg launched its Cybersecurity Competence Center ("C3") on October 16. A number of events were held over the course of the week, including the PwC Cybersecurity Day, held on October 19. This event brought together 10 of the world's most cutting-edge cybersecurity companies to present their technologies to a powerful audience of angel investors, venture capital companies (VCs), CEOs, Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) from the Benelux area and beyond, as well as cybersecurity experts - from Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Israel and the U.S. Stratus. Digital Systems Inc., a young company based in Eugene, Oregon USA, was voted the Most Promising Company by the audience in attendance.

In the current environment, cybercriminals need two critical elements to be successful in their activities: Time (to focus on prized data), and a static Target ( the networked servers which they exploit to access valuable data). Stratus' evolutionary technology denies the cybercriminal both Time and Target by creating on-demand servers with randomly assigned, unpredictable IP addresses to which only the authorized, transaction participants have access. When the user terminates the transaction, the software is erased and the server is destroyed. Stratus' solution therefore reduces Internet exposure, cuts the cybercriminal's residence and destroys the attackers' progress before data can be stolen. In essence, this technology denies cybercriminals the Target by making it unfindable and the Time they need to infiltrate a system by terminating the transaction server.

The impact of Stratus' paradigm-shifting technology cannot be overstated. It puts control squarely back in the hands of organizations with sensitive data and dramatically reduces immense potential losses (a recent breach of a major company's data is estimated to cost them $300-$325 million, and caused them to lose $3 billion in total Company Value, or Market Capitalization). Stratus' technology is also infinitely scalable and seamlessly integrated within existing systems.

Getswish, the company behind real-time payment solution Swish, is partnering with Tieto and Bontouch to take the next step in the development of mobile payments. 

AccessData Group, a leading provider of integrated digital forensics and e-discovery software, today announced that its AD Lab centralized investigations platform is now the first product in its category to be available to users in a cloud-based environment.

"As data sets in digital forensics investigations continue to grow and teams become more distributed, our customers have been asking us to offer flexible deployment options for using our software," said Victor Limongelli, chief executive officer of AccessData. "In addition to installing AD Lab onto our customers' on-premise servers, we're now able to help them leverage the scalability of the cloud as well. Customers can quickly and easily benefit from AD Lab without making any hardware investments."

AD Lab is a large-scale investigations and processing engine that enables computer forensics labs of all sizes to provide their teams with collaborative analysis, centralized case management and web-based review, thereby dramatically streamlining the investigative process.

The product is now available to customers on Amazon Web Services, a leading cloud platform for the delivery of professional software tools, and can be obtained on AWS Marketplace by clicking here. Customers will be asked to enter their AD Lab license information and will then be granted access to the software. AccessData expects to have AD Lab available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform this quarter.

AD eDiscovery and Summation

Limongelli also announced that the company is moving forward on an initiative to make its flagship e-discovery software product, AD eDiscovery, available to customers in a cloud-based environment as well. AD eDiscovery better equips corporate IT and corporate legal teams with the needed software platform to efficiently and seamlessly conduct data collection, enterprise search, preservation, litigation holds, data processing, early data assessment and complete legal review.

Meanwhile, the company released new 6.3 versions of both AD eDiscovery and Summation, a web-based e-discovery review solution that supports the post-data collection stages of the e-discovery process and enables secure collaboration, regardless of where any member of the litigation team is located.

Most notably, the AccessData tools are now able to connect with Brainspace, the industry's leading machine learning software that leverages the power of augmented intelligence to accelerate e-discovery review. Brainspace customers can now push data from -- and pull data out of -- AD eDiscovery, in order to gain deeper insights into their data sets.

AD eDiscovery 6.3 and Summation 6.3 also feature enhancements to collect emails containing "illegal" data and migrate those files into the AccessData environment for processing, new data collector support for the latest Enterprise Vault and OneDrive environments, and the ability to create and export searchable PDFs from native files.

"These enhancements bring powerful infrastructure upgrades for improved analytics, as well as greater functionality with email collection and PDF exporting," said Limongelli.

For more information about the new versions of AccessData's e-discovery or digital forensics software products, please click here.

Pioneering Indian tech firm WandX (https://www.wandx.co/), led by CEO Abhinav Ramesh, will launch a token sale on Friday 27 October to fund the building of its groundbreaking platform, which will allow investors to create and trade in derivative products based on crypto-assets.

Expectation around the token sale is high and a pre-sale raised 530 Ether (approximately $150,000) in only 36 hours.

Abhinav Ramesh, 26, who has a background in supply-chain and analytics at Ernst & Young, “Until now, cryptocurrency investors have used decentralised exchanges to buy and sell different cryptocurrencies, in the hope of growing their assets.  The difficulty that investors encounter is that, with no centralised bodies regulating the supply of cryptocurrencies, their values can be volatile.

“Investors can only exchange an amount of one currency with an equivalent value of another, which is problematic because it makes it more difficult for them to diversify their portfolio and avoid unnecessary risk.

“That’s where WandX comes in. WandX goes a step further than the decentralised exchanges that enable trade between different tokens, and enables users to create – and trade in – portfolios and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of tokens in the rapidly-growing ERC20 class.  

“These instruments can facilitate the hedging of risk and enable users to own multiple tokens with a single transaction.  The plan is that this will not only make investing in cryptocurrencies easier for those who are already involved, but will attract new investors to the market.”

As it is built on the Ethereum blockchain, WandX can use smart contracts to ‘bundle’ together assets.

Unusually for a product holding a token sale, Abhinav’s team – based in Bangalore, India – have already created a prototype platform.

The platform will also contain measuring and analytical functions, so that users can compare the performance of products and strategise accordingly.  It will offer a range of derivatives such as futures, options, securitisation of income streams and debt instruments.

The token sale will see the introduction of the WAND token, 55,000 of which will be issued.  The WandX team will end the sale when they raise their maximum of 12,500 Ether – approximately $3,720,000 or the 40-day time limit expires.

The WandX team is supported by a broad range of influential advisers and partners, such as financial services expert Raghuttama Rao, blockchain pioneer Bryan Feinberg, management advisor Ramesh Srinivas, data scientist and ICO adviser Nagu Thogiti and fintech entrepreneur Yogesh Gaikwad.