News

BNS – The French GEFCO group, which ranks among the largest transit and logistics operators worldwide, is planning to open its representation in Estonia in the fourth quarter of this year, the daily Aripaev reported.

A holding of the French auto group PSA Peugeot-Citroen, GEFCO already has representations in Latvia and Lithuania.

For GEFCO ports of the Baltic countries are an area where to develop transit corridors from Europe and America to Central Asia. In Central Asia GEFCO's focus of attention is on Kazakhstan, GEFCO said.

"Right now negotiations are under way with a successful and rapidly developing Estonian logistics company that in certain directions of activity is representing the interests of  GEFCO Baltic in Estonia," the sales and marketing director for GEFCO Baltic, Dmitri Solovjov, said.

The Estonian representation is seen to help GEFCO expand its business also to Finland, the report said.

GEFCO Baltic, the group's subsidiary established in 2008, posted a turnover of 18 million euros for 2010 and increased their number of employees from 16 to 26 during the year, according to an earlier press release by GEFCO.

ERR - A website introducing Estonia's success as e-nation and best practices of the digital society was launched on April 29.

The idea of the website, e-Estonia.com, was put forward by the ICT export cluster in cooperation with the ICT Demo Center and enterprises operating in Estonia.

According to Indrek Vimberg, CEO of the recently opened Demo Center, the demand for such a website, giving a concise overview of all the implemented e-solutions, has been high.

"Hopefully the site will become a valuable source of information to all those interested in the development of the information society and will provide support and inspiration for professionals and visionaries internationally," said Vimberg.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/97f7b583-f70d-4dc4-9097-7052e7226a58

What problem do they solve? Trust is a huge issue in the cloud. Most trust discussions today focus on the end user, but data integrity is equally important. Just as organizations worry now over how they’re going to trust that insiders are actually who they say they are, they should also be worrying about how reliable and trustworthy their data is.
IP theft, data loss and non-compliance can all result from mishandled data. One method that has been proposed but never caught on was data signatures. Unfortunately, signing through PKI or similar technologies is out of reach for most organizations because of the expense and complexity of key management.

What they do: What VeriSign has done for website trust; GuardTime seeks to do for cloud-based trust.. GuardTime has created a keyless signature technology that secures critical data in the cloud and maintains extensive mathematical proof that data integrity is intact. GuardTime’s Keyless Signature is a system of software-generated, automated verification based on mathematics, which frees IT from the burdens of key management.

Why they’re an up-and-comer? Regulatory requirements centered on privacy and data integrity are issues for nearly every industry now, and verifiably clean data goes a long way towards ensuring compliance. This is a big horizontal market, and GuardTime is already cashing in with such customers as Brother Industries, which manufactures multi-function printers using GuardTime integration. GuardTime has partnered with Joyent to deliver the first cloud stack with keyless signature integration.

GuardTime also earned some cyber-security street cred through adventures in Estonia. CEO Mike Gault gained in-the-trenches, cutting-edge cyber-security knowledge while living in Estonia when Russia launched one of the first “cyber-warfare attacks.” Calling it that is probably a bit sensationalist; nonetheless, in a country where 97% of banking transactions are done online, there’s plenty to learn about next-generation security.

ERR - Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) raised Estonia's outlook to positive.

The country's entrance into the Eurozone, its strict budget measures and low foreign debt all contributed to Estonia's upgrading by the three major rating agencies last year.

In a resurgence from over 15 percent unemployment during the global recession, S&P said, Estonia's export-driven economic recovery has been impressively flexible and competitive.

"The debt problems of various countries clearly stress the need for reserves," said Bank of Estonia Vice President Märten Ross. "The [Estonian] central bank's opinion is that it is necessary for the country to continue its current budget strategy, by which a budget surplus would be achieved by 2013."

The country's long-term S&P rating is A.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/216c6c23-5293-4c86-887a-a879f3b1a781

ERR - Freedom House, a New York-based watchdog organization for human rights, has rated Estonia the most free of 37 countries it surveyed in its "Freedom on the Net 2011" report.

Using three criteria to measure freedom - obstacles to internet access, limits on content and violations of user rights - the survey put Estonia at the top of the list, noting the country's highly-developed online culture and the fact that content restrictions are among the lightest in the world.

The US, Germany, Australia and the UK followed Estonia at the "free" end of the scale, while China, Cuba, Burma and Iran bottomed out the list as "not free."

Overall the report found "diverse and growing threats to internet freedom" throughout the world including cyber attacks, politically motivated censorship, and government control over internet infrastructure.

It listed Thailand, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Jordan as being at particular risk of suffering setbacks.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/3c43307a-3728-4d1e-b521-14d30a4d9be1

ERR - Joint cyber security training must be conducted already in 2011 between the European Union and US, Minister of Economic Affairs Juhan Parts said at the Critical Information Infrastructure Protection conference held in Hungary on April 15.

"Countries have realized the importance of cyber security and are revising their legislations. While the development of regulations and policies is important, only practical cyber training can bring out the possibilities for practical cooperation and threats," Parts said in his keynote speech.

"We must act and evolve in the field of cyber security as fast as the criminals do, meaning that we cannot put important actions on hold," Parts said.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/politics/05ec4335-6806-4a19-a6ec-18529afbe005

ERR - Port of Tallinn, Estonian Railways and Alekon Cargo OÜ signed a cooperation agreement in Peking with Chinese state-owned Sinotrans.

According to the April 14 agreement, Sinotrans will start channeling its transit flow through Port of Tallinn Ltd., using Estonian Railways' infrastructure. Alekon Cargo will provide customs brokerage services.

Sinotrans was founded in 2009 in a merger of the China National Foreign Trade Transportation Corporation and China Changjiang National Shipping Group. The company offers cargo transport, freight forwarding and ship brokerage as well as various warehouse-rental and cargo terminal services. The company has nearly 100 subsidiaries in South Korea, Japan, Canada, the US and Germany. It also owns a sizeable fleet of bulk carriers, tankers, container-liners and rolling stock vessels.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/68bbb296-df20-41da-a006-8af8efc77f8a

ERR - The Port of Tallinn, Estonian Railways and one of Russia's largest transport companies Rail Garant signed an agreement on April 11 to start up a 130-million-euro container terminal at Muuga Harbor.

The deal comes a month after the Port of Tallinn awarded Rail Garant the much-sought-after contract to operate its planned terminal.

Infrastructure for the facility was installed last summer thanks to over 64 million euros in EU support. Rail Garant said it is planning to invest the same amount again to further develop the terminal, which should come on line in early 2013, uudised.err.ee reported.

Rail Garant CEO Nikolai Falin said the advantages of the Port of Tallinn were its convenient location, advanced infrastructure, year-round accessibility, simplified customs clearance procedures and the absence of customs fees.

"At the same time, the Russian ports of the northwest are overloaded and don't have the throughput capacity to handle cargo volumes even at current levels," said Falin.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/297170c1-ab6b-4021-8fd5-32df63e3c6cb

ERR - A forecast by the consultancy firm Ernst & Young predicts that Estonia will be the Eurozone's leader in economic growth over the next five years.

Ernst & Young's economic forecast for the Eurozone, which it is publishing in cooperation with Oxford Economics, will be released today, April 5. For the first time it includes an entire section devoted to the development of the Estonian economy, uudised.err.ee reported.

Ivar Kiigemägi, an audit partner at Ernst & Young Baltic, told ETV that while the general economic backdrop in Europe is rather complicated, the Estonian economy has come out as the one that will grow the most rapidly in the next five years.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/09387065-e560-4548-86dc-3551e20aba70

ERR - American mining company Molycorp has bought up a 90.023 share in Estonia's rare earth metals producer AS Silmet, taking control of one of very few sources of the much-sought materials outside China.

The Colorado-based firm paid approximately 62 million euros for its shares, buying 80 percent of the company from former majority holder Silmet Grupp, owned by former prime minister Tiit Vähi, and the remainder of its shares from Austrian firm Treibacher Industrie AG. The deal leaves Silmet Grupp with just under 10 percent ownership, according to a release from Molycorp.

"This acquisition provides Molycorp with a European base of operations as well as a larger global customer base, greater rare earth production capacity, and an expanded product line that extends our interests into other strategic metals and technologies," Mark Smith, Molycorp CEO, said in the April 4 statement.

Read more: http://news.err.ee/economy/c12a9355-2b41-46d3-b00e-875806144126