While I was back in Sao Paulo last month I had the chance to meet up with Cristiano Lincoln Mattos, founding CEO of Brazilian security intelligence software and services firm, Tempest. I had met his UK management team last August not long after they had set up their first international office here in London (see Brazilian Tempest brings ethical hacking storm to UK).
Tempest is the archetypal ‘Little Brazilian Battler’ – or as I have dubbed them, ‘Brapembra’® (short for BRAva Pequena EMpresa BRAsileira– literally ‘courageous small Brazilian company’) – punching above its weight in both the domestic and increasingly international markets.
While Tempest’s core business still very much centres around managed security services and ‘pentesting’ (penetration testing – i.e. ‘ethical hacking), it’s Tempest’s new services – such as Threat Intelligence – where Lincoln (as he is known) is focusing the company’s development efforts. And not without result; Tempest recently signed a ‘proof of concept’ agreement for its Threat Intelligence solution with a major UK publisher. Tempest has also developed a cloud-based service called Sentinel, which provides ‘second factor authentication’ (2FA) without the need for physical tokens such as digital security widgets. They hope to introduce Sentinel to the UK market soon.
Lincoln is looking to develop channel partnerships in the UK and talks are already underway with a major UK-headquartered global managed IT services organisation. As I have said before, I think there is no better way for ambitious UK IT companies to explore opportunities in the Brazilian IT market than by partnering with a domestic player looking to do likewise in the UK.