Will MasterCard Sell Big Data?

MasterCard Inc, the world’s second-largest credit card association, sees business booming from selling data to retailers, banks and governments on spending patterns found in the payments it processes, a top executive told Reuters.

MasterCard, which handles payments for 2 billion cardholders and tens of millions of merchants, uses that information to generate real-time data on consumer trends, available more quickly that regular government statistics.

“It is an incredibly fast growing area for us,” Ann Cairns, who heads MasterCard’s business outside North America, said in an interview, stressing that the company respects cardholder privacy, using anonymous data rather than personal information.

MasterCard does not give figures for its information services products but “other revenues”, which include the sale of data, grew 22 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to $341 million, outpacing the growth of total revenue dominated by payments processing, which rose 14 percent to $2.177 billion.

Cairns said clients for the data include retailers, banks and governments, with MasterCard tailoring it to their needs.

“Retailers are fantastic at using the data they have available about how people shop in their store, how their inventory turns over, but what they don’t know is what happens outside their store,” she said. “The data we’ve got is ubiquitous across the whole market. We can help retailers see what they need to do to capture more sales.”

Cairns, 57, a statistician by training who joined MasterCard in 2011 after helping manage the disposal of Lehman Brothers assets in Europe, revels in the insights real-time card data can provide, such as London’s popularity as the world’s top travel destination and a rise in spending on experiences such as eating out or going on holiday rather than shopping in stores.

MasterCard has recorded a spike in spending in Brazil on groceries and a drop in spending on luxury goods as the price of food has risen ahead of the World Cup, she said, the kind of insight valued by companies such as Nike and Adidas that are hoping to sell $300 soccer boots during the competition.

While MasterCard expands in “big data”, Cairns sees no slowdown in its traditional business of processing payments, with plenty of potential for growth as 85 percent of consumer transactions are still made by cash or check.

“Moving money and doing it safely and securely is so deeply cared about by so many people around the world that it will be a business that has fantastic value now and for years to come,” said Cairns, who previously worked at Citigroup and ABN Amro.

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PoS Cyber Attacks Up In 2013

A third of data intrusion investigated by security firm Trustwave last year involved compromises of point-of-sale (POS) systems and over half of all intrusions targeted payment card data.

Even though POS systems remained a significant target for attackers, as suggested by several high-profile data breaches disclosed by large retailers over the past six months, the largest number of data theft incidents last year actually involved e-commerce sites, Trustwave said Wednesday in a report that compiled data from 691 data breach investigations conducted by the company around the world.

E-commerce intrusions accounted for 54 percent of investigated data breaches and POS system intrusions accounted for 33 percent, Trustwave said. A separate report published by Verizon in April also pointed to Web application and PoS attacks as leading causes of security incidents with confirmed data disclosure last year.

According to Trustwave, over half of intrusions targeted payment-card data, with such data being stolen from e-commerce transactions in 36 percent of incidents and from POS transactions in 19 percent of attacks.

In Western Europe in particular, where countries have rolled out EMV — chip-and-PIN payment card transactions — cybercriminals shifted their focus from POS devices to e-commerce platforms, said John Yeo, EMEA Director at Trustwave. “EMV has changed the pattern of compromises when it comes to payment-card-specific data.”

However, a significant increase in the theft of sensitive, non-payment-card data, was also observed last year. This data includes financial credentials, personally identifiable information, merchant ID numbers and internal company communications, and was stolen in 45 percent of incidents, Trustwave said in the report.

Customer records containing personally identifiable information can possibly be used to perpetrate identity fraud and are sought after on the black market, so that’s why there’s been an uptick in attacks focusing on such data, Yeo said.

Only about a third of victim companies were able to self-detect data breaches, Trustwave found. In 58 percent of cases, breaches were identified by regulatory bodies, the credit card companies or merchant banks.

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MediaTek To Offer New LTE SoC

MediaTek has shown off one of its most interesting SoC designs to date at the China Electronic Information Expo. The MT6595 was announced a while ago, but this is apparently the first time MediaTek showcased it in action.

It is a big.LITTLE octa-core with integrated LTE support. It has four Cortex A17 cores backed by four Cortex A7 cores and it can hit 2.2GHz. The GPU of choice is the PowerVR G6200. It supports 2K4K video playback and recording, as well as H.265. It can deal with a 20-megapixel camera, too.

The really interesting bit is the modem. It can handle TD-LTE/FDD-LTE/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA/GSM networks, hence the company claims it is the first octa-core with on board LTE. Qualcomm has already announced an LTE-enabled octa-core, but it won’t be ready anytime soon. The MT6595 will – it is expected to show up in actual devices very soon.

Of course, MediaTek is going after a different market. Qualcomm is building the meanest possible chip with four 64-bit Cortex A57 cores and four A53 cores, while MediaTek is keeping the MT6595 somewhat simpler, with smaller 32-bit cores.

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nVidia Goes For Raspberry Pi

nVidia has unveiled what it claims is “the world’s first mobile supercomputer”, a development kit powered by a Tegra K1 chip.

Dubbed the Jetson TK1, the kit is built for embedded systems to aid the development of computers attempting to simulate human recognition of physical objects, such as robots and self-driving cars.

Speaking at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) on Tuesday, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen Hsun Huang described it as “the world’s tiniest little supercomputer”, noting that it’s capable of running anything the Geforce GTX Titan Z graphics card can run, but at a slower pace.

With a total performance of 326 GFLOPS, the Jetson TK1 should be more powerful than the Raspberry Pi board, which delivers just 24 GFLOPS, but will retail for much more, costing $192 in the US – a number that matches the number of cores in the Tegra K1 processor that Nvidia launched at CES in Las Vegas in January.

Described by the company as a “super chip” that can bridge the gap between mobile computing and supercomputing, the Nvidia Tegra K1, which replaces the Tegra 4, is based on the firm’s Kepler GPU architecture.

The firm boasted at CES that the chip will be capable of bringing next-generation PC gaming to mobile devices, and Nvidia claimed that it will be able to match the PS4 and Xbox One consoles’ graphics performance.

Designed from the ground up for CUDA, which now has more than 100,000 developers, the Jetson TK1 Developer Kit includes the programming tools required by software developers to develop and deploy compute-intensive systems quickly, Nvidia claimed.

“The Jetson TK1 also comes with this new SDK called Vision Works. Stacked onto CUDA, it comes with a whole bunch of primitives whether it’s recognising corners or detecting edges, or it could be classifying objects. Parameters are loaded into this Vision Works primitives system and all of a sudden it recognises objects,” Huang said.

“On top of it, there’s simple pipe lines we’ve created for you in sample code so that it helps you get started on what a structure for motion algorithm, object detection, object tracking algorithms would look like and on top of that you could develop your own application.”

Nvidia also expects the Jetson TK1 to be able to operate in the sub-10 Watt market for applications that previously consumed 100 Watts or more.

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IT Dissatisfaction Growing

Companies want to reduce spending on IT operations and infrastructure and shift resources to revenue-producing areas, according to two new studies. But businesses leaders and IT executives are also registering higher levels of dissatisfaction with IT as more demands are placed on technology.

The reports, by the Hackett Group and McKinsey & Co., both agree that business executives want IT to do more to improve the bottom line while companies spend less on infrastructure in the process.

The bad news for people who work in IT operations is that large businesses expect to cut IT staff positions by about 2% this year, thanks to automation and outsourcing, according the Hackett’s survey of 160 businesses with revenues above $1 billion.

One path to improved automation will likely be through adoption of software-defined infrastructures, something Bank of America plans to do.

IT budgets will grow by 1.7% this year as IT pivots, increasingly, from a service-providing operation to a revenue-generating one, the Hackett Group said in its study.

IT managers are being told that “you’ve got to grow the business, not just run the business,” said Mark Peacock, an IT transformation practice leader and principal at Hackett.

McKinsey & Co., in its online survey of more than 800 executives — with 345 having a technology focus — also found that executives want less of their budgets to go to infrastructure so more resources can be shifted to analytics and innovation.

The McKinsey survey found that business executives are less likely to say now that IT performs effectively, compared to their views two years ago.

“The IT executives are even more negative,” wrote McKinsey, with only 13% of them saying their IT organizations “are completely or very effective at introducing new technologies faster or more effectively than competitors.” That percentage was down from 22% in 2012.

The negative results “likely reflect the overall rising expectations for corporate IT,” wrote McKinsey.

When asked how to fix IT shortcomings, respondents cited improved business accountability, more funds for priority projects and a higher the level of IT talent, the report said.

The Hackett Group survey didn’t report on dissatisfaction, but it did find that the top goal for IT organizations this year is “to strengthen partnership and goal alignment between IT and the business.”

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Cisco Goes To The Cloud

Cisco Systems Inc will offer cloud computing services, pledging to spend $1 billion over the next two years to make a foray into a market currently dominated by the world’s biggest online retailer Amazon.com Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Cisco said it will spend the amount to build data centers to help run the new service called Cisco Cloud Services, the Journal reported.

Cisco, which mainly deals in networking hardware, wants to take advantage of companies’ desire to rent computing services rather than buying and maintaining their own machines.

Enterprise hardware spending is dwindling across the globe as companies cope with shrinking budgets, slowing or uncertain economies and a fundamental migration to cloud computing, which reduces demand for equipment by outsourcing data management and computing needs.

“Everybody is realizing the cloud can be a vehicle for achieving better economics (and) lower cost,” the Journal quoted Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s president of development and sales as saying.

“It does not mean that we’re embarking on a strategy to go head-to-head with Amazon.”

Microsoft Corp last year said it was cutting prices for hosting and processing customers’ online data in an aggressive challenge to Amazon’s lead in the growing business of cloud computing.

Cisco could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S.business hours.

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HP Unveils 3D Plan

Hewlett-Packard Co will unveil plans to enter the commercial 3D-printing arena in June, saying it has resolved a number of technical issues that have hindered broader adoption of the high-tech manufacturing process.

Chief Executive Meg Whitman told shareholders the company will make a “big technology announcement” that month around how it will approach a market that has excited the imagination of investors and consumers.

Critics have accused the sci-fi-like technology of being over-hyped and still too immature for widespread consumer adoption.

Industry observers have long expected HP, the largest of several printer-making companies from Canon to Xerox, to eventually get into the business. Whitman said HP’s inhouse researchers have resolved limitations involved with the quality of substrates used in the process, which affects the durability of finished products.

“We actually think we’ve solved these problems,” Whitman told an annual shareholders meeting. “The bigger market is going to be in the enterprise space,” manufacturing parts and prototypes in ways that were not possible before.

“We’re on the case,” she said without elaborating.

HP executives have estimated that worldwide sales of 3D printers and related software and services will grow to almost $11 billion by 2021 from a mere $2.2 billion in 2012.

The nascent 3D-printing market is now dominated by a number of smaller players like MakerBot, a unit of Stratasys that is concentrating on selling more affordable devices to consumers.

Contract manufacturers like Flextronics however already use the technology to help craft prototype parts or devices for corporate clients.

“HP is currently exploring the many possibilities of 3D printing and the company will play an important role in its development,” CTO and HP Labs director Martin Fink said in a February blogpost on HP’s website.

“The fact is that 3D printing is really still an immature technology, but it has a magical aura. The sci-fi movie idea that you can magically create things on command makes the idea of 3D printing really compelling for people.”

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Is Ethernet For Autos?

The most ubiquitous local area networking technology used by large companies may be packing its bags for a road trip.

As in-vehicle electronics become more sophisticated to support autonomous driving, cameras, and infotainment systems, Ethernet has become a top contender for connecting them.

For example, the BMW X5 automobile, released last year, used single-pair twisted wire, 100Mbps Ethernet to connect its driver-assistance cameras.

Paris-based Parrot, which supplies mobile accessories to automakers BMW, Hyundai and others, has developed in-car Ethernet. Its first Ethernet-connected systems could hit the market as soon as 2015, says Eric Riyahi, executive vice president of global operations.

Parrot’s new Ethernet-based Audio Video Bridging (AVB) technology uses Broadcom’s BroadR-Reach automotive Ethernet controller chips.

The AVB technology’s network management capabilities allows automakers to control the timing of data streams between specific network nodes in a vehicle and controls the bandwidth in order to manage competing data traffic.

Ethernet’s greater bandwidth could provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays.

“In-car Ethernet is seen as a very promising way to provide the needed bandwidth for coming new applications within the fields of connectivity, infotainment and safety,” said Hans Alminger, senior manager for Diagnostics & ECU Platform at Volvo, in a statement.

Ethernet was initially used by automakers only for on-board diagnostics. But as automotive electronics advanced, the technology has found a place in advanced driver assistance systems and infotainment platforms.

Many manufacturers also use Ethernet to connect rear vision cameras to a car’s infotainment or safety system, said Patrick Popp, chief technology officer of Automotive at TE Connectivity, a maker of car antennas and other automobile communications parts.

Currently, however, there are as many as nine proprietary auto networking specifications, including LIN, CAN/CAN-FD, MOST and FlexRay. FlexRay, for example, has a 10Mbps transmission rate. Ethernet could increase that 10 fold or more.

The effort to create a single vehicle Ethernet standard is being lead by Open Alliance and the IEEE 802.3 working group. The groups are working to establish 100Mbps and 1Gbps Ethernet as de facto standards.

The first automotive Ethernet standard draft is expected this year.

The Open Alliance claims more than 200 members, including General Motors, Ford, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen. Jaguar Land Rover, Renault, Volvo, Bosch, Freescale and Harman.

Broadcom, which makes electronic control unit chips for automobiles, is a member of the Open Alliance and is working on the effort to standardize automotive Ethernet.

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SEC Plans Cybersecurity Meeting

The Securities and Exchange Commission said that its making plans to conduct a roundtable next month to discuss cybersecurity, after massive retailer breaches refocused the attention of the business community and policymakers on the area.

The SEC said that it would hold the event on March 26 to talk about the challenges cyber threats pose for market participants and public companies.

Recent breaches at Target Corp and Neiman Marcus have sparked concern from lawmakers and revived a long-running spat among retailers and banks over who should bear the cost of consumer losses and technology investments to improve security.

Last Thursday, trade groups for the two industries announced they are forming a partnership to work through the disputes.

U.S. lawmakers have also considered weighing in on how consumers should be notified of data theft. But progress on legislation is not guaranteed in a busy election year.

The SEC in 2011 drafted informal staff-level guidance for public companies to use when considering whether to disclose cyber attacks and their impact on a company’s financial condition.

SEC Chair Mary Jo White last year told Congress that her agency was reviewing whether a more robust disclosure process is needed. But she told reporters last fall she felt the guidance appeared to be working well and that she didn’t see an immediate need to create a rule that mandates public reporting on cyber attacks.

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Software Glitch Hits Prius

Toyota is recalling nearly 1.9 million Prius hybrid automobiles globally in order to fix a software glitch that could damage transistors and cause a loss of power.

Some 700,000 of the Priuses are in the U.S., according to a statement. Another 997,000 are in Japan, 130,000 in Europe and the remainder in other places around the world, according to media reports. Toyota didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation of those details on.

Toyota plans to tweak software in the Priuses for the motor/generator ECU (engine control unit) and the hybrid control ECU. The current settings “could result in higher thermal stress in certain transistors, potentially causing them to become damaged,” Toyota said. “If this happens, various warning lights will illuminate and the vehicle can enter a failsafe mode. In rare circumstances, the hybrid system might shut down while the vehicle is being driven, resulting in the loss of power and the vehicle coming to a stop.”

Toyota is also recalling about 260,000 2012 RAV4 compact sport utility vehicles, 2012-2013 Tacoma trucks and 2012-2013 Lexus RX 350 SUVs in the U.S., the company said Wednesday.

Toyota will apply an update to skid control ECU software on cars in this recall to fix an “electronic circuit condition” that could cause the vehicles stability control, anti-lock braking systems and traction control function to shut down intermittently, Toyota said. However, in the event of such a failure the standard brakes will still work, according to the company.

No accidents or injuries have been reported in connection with the software problems, Toyota said. The software update will be applied free of charge at local dealers.

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