Taiwan Has 'Big-Data-Free' Social Platform
By TheWAY - 4월 21, 2018
Taiwan Has 'Big-Data-Free' Social Platform
Can Taiwan answer France’s call for secure IM?
TAIPEI — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at Congressional hearings in Washington last week has surfaced long-overdue questions about the ownership and privacy of data. This scrutiny now impinges on social media networks and messaging apps such as WhatsApp, owned by Facebook.
The questions that linger are: Who owns the data, where is it stored, who gets to read it, and how is the system set up — or not set up — to protect user privacy?
Reuters reported on Monday (April 16) that the French government is building its own encrypted messenger service to ease fears that foreign entities could spy on private conversations between top officials, according to the digital ministry.
The problems facing France are two-fold. None of the world’s leading encrypted message apps are either owned by France or based in France. This raises concerns over the risk of data breaches at servers outside of the country.
Meet ITRI’s spinoff
Curiously, what France needs might have been already invented in Taiwan. LoFTech, a spinoff of Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), non-profit technology R&D group in Taiwan, has developed a real-time messaging platform, called Juiker, designed with national security in mind.
Paul Huang, founder and CEO of LoFTech, told us, “We designed our platform as a B2B risk-management tool that allows data to be stored on the Federated Cloud.” Huang explained that each government, or financial institution, for example, is strongly motivated to protect its data and communications by its own rules.
Governments and institutions can use Juiker to store their data privately at any location that they prefer. Huang called it the “Enterprise Cloud Layer” of the Federated Cloud. “Our customers love the convenience of choosing their location and [the ability of] changing [it] as needed,” he explained.
If LoFTech’s customers are small and medium enterprises, they can choose to use the public cloud. If so, data will reside at the “National Cloud Layer” of the Federated Cloud, he said.
Counter-intuitive idea
Most social-app business models are advertising-based, collecting no fees from users. “This means having access to your content is critical to their success; they need to exercise Big Data on their users to better understand and know their users better,” noted Huang. “Their business model is based on selling user content and profile.”
By contrast, LoFTech collects fees from users directly. The company charges customers by the number of seats per company or institution. That means, said Huang, “We do not want their data or will not exercise Big Data analysis on these contents.”
But in the era of Big Data, how did LoFtech stir up this counterintuitive brainstorm — not wanting users’ data? “The idea came from the Taiwan government,” said Huang. The government asked ITRI for a secure real-time messaging app whose data and traffic could be stored on a database platform that the government can run on its own.
Competitive landscape
Since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, many governments and institutions are seeking to increase their vigilance over the privacy and ownership of data.
WeChat, for example, stores its communication data in China. Facebook owns WhatsApp. Telegram, said to be a favorite of French President Emmanuel Macron, is a cloud-based instant messaging service developed by a privately held company founded by a Russian entrepreneur and registered in the U.K. Line, Japan’s most popular instant messaging app, is operated by Line Corp., a Japanese subsidiary of the South Korean internet search giant Naver Corp.
There are also other U.S.-based instant messaging platforms popular among enterprises including Slack, Symphony, and Microsoft Teams, but all three “still keep their data on their platform,” according to Huang.
LoFTech’s Juiker project started at ITRI in 2013 as a B2B app development based on at least one government request. Huang suspects that other national governments have similar desires. He also senses growing demand from enterprises and financial institutions who have strict business practices requiring them to secure and record each communication as evidence for future use.
SOURCE: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333193
0 개의 댓글