Cybercriminals are taking advantage of COVID-19 and the new reality it has imposed: telecommuting hitting peak levels and huge amounts of information — and misinformation — circulating the Internet. Scammers are ramping up their activities as they try to maximize ill-gotten gains. We explain how these organized groups work, what attacks are the most common, and what we can do to protect ourselves.

Since the start of the COVID outbreak, a plethora of mobile data collection applications have been developed to help users to report their symptoms and track the disease. In countries like South Korea these ‘apps’ have gone even further and provide authorities with the ability to alert users when they’ve been in direct contact with a confirmed positive case. In this article we take a look at how these applications work, what they are for and how they handle user information.

In the era of forced social distancing as a result of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, this technology has become one of biggest allies in the fight against the coronavirus.

Transactionality in databases is fundamental for critical systems, but the historical asymmetry between reads (massive) and writes (specific, but can impact in the middle of a read operation) could be solved with a new approach. Last year Databricks released to the community a new data persistence format built on Write-Once Read-Many (HDFS, S3, Blob storage) and based on Apache Parquet.

In the last few weeks the international community has called on the innovation ecosystem to band together in a coordinated fight against the coronavirus pandemic. A large number of initiatives have risen to the occasion, encompassing schemes that support startups, developers that propose technical solutions, and requests for institutions to share their data with the scientific community. These projects share a single goal: to combine forces, creativity, and resources in the fight against the virus and its far-reaching effects.

Researchers, businesses, and innovators around the world are putting technology to work to alleviate the effects of the global health crisis. From applications that collect data to track the spread of the virus to 3D printed ventilators for hospitals: these are some of the various technology projects rising to the occasion in the fight against coronavirus.

While the pandemic created by the novel COVID-19 develops and sends Americans down an unprecedented path, fraudsters are jumping at the chance to capitalize on that uncertainty.

Pablo Inchausti works at BBVA Argentina and is a very special member of the ‘Ninja’ initiative. In 2019, he became the first person to earn a black belt as part of this program designed to promote and give visibility to BBVA’s technological talent. Now he’s willing to help more and more colleagues do the same.

BBVA’s ‘Ninja’ initiative is a pioneering program designed to allow any employee to acquire technological knowledge and skills thanks to the use of gamification techniques and training offered by the best tech companies and educational platforms in the market. Following its success in the units more linked to the Group’s technological transformation –where nearly 9,000 employees are currenlty enrolled–, it will expand to new areas of the bank in 2020.

Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins visited BBVA headquarters on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of their strategic partnership.

Quantum computing has taken a short time to make a big leap: from R&D laboratories to corporate meeting rooms. BBVA began its quantum journey almost two years ago and now has a team specialized in quantum development, business units involved in the initiative, strategic alliances agreed, and various lines of research in place.

BBVA CEO Onur Genç recently visited the U.S. operations of BBVA in a homecoming of sorts. As the President and CEO of the global financial services company’s U.S. subsidiary in 2017 and 2018, Genç is highly familiar with the bank’s U.S. operations, and the team was glad to welcome him back for a series of meetings meant to encourage the market as they begin the execution phase of the bank’s new 5-year strategic plan.

Is it possible to take advantage of big data without it affecting the privacy of users? The answer may reside in “Privacy-enhancing technologies”, or PETs, a set of technologies that use different computational and mathematical approaches with the same purpose: extracting data value in order to unleash its full commercial, scientific and social potential, without jeopardizing the privacy and security of this information.

Did you know? There are more than 1,300 different roles within BBVA—and they all play a critical role in creating opportunities for our customers. Over the coming months, we’ll be profiling some team members and sharing how they’re Working for Our Customers.

2019 has seen the first 5G networks rolled out and the first achievements in quantum computing, as well as the establishment of various financial initiatives using blockchain. These three technologies will mark a before and after in the banking sector in the years to come.

As part of Garanti BBVA’s goal to enhance customer experience on the go, the bank is now offering customer service on a corporate WhatsApp account. The new WhatsApp service allows customers to resolve their problems quickly and get detailed information on the bank’s products and services  – all on a channel they already use on a daily basis.

In this second article, BBVA experts in various fields give their views on the changes and breakthroughs that happened during 2019, and the ones we will see in the technological banking landscape in 2020.

Garanti BBVA Executive Vice President Didem Dinçer Başer joined the Women in Technology (Wtech) Association at their inaugural event, ‘Human Diversity in Technology.’ The Wtech Association aims to increase the number of women in technology by helping them fulfill their potential and advocating for equal opportunities. Didem Dinçer Başer participated in a panel entitled ‘Future with Technology’ where she discussed the future of digital banking and ever-changing customer expectations.

The role technology plays in people’s lives –both personal and business– is continually growing. As a bank, BBVA committed to transforming itself digitally long before the start of the last decade, understanding that technology was going to have a huge impact on how the industry operates. In this article, BBVA experts in various fields give their view on the changes that 2020 will see in the technological landscape.

One of the biggest challenges in advanced analytics is developing mechanisms to determine how reliable the decisions made by algorithms are. Now, research by BBVA’s Artificial Intelligence Factory is proposing a new method to make machine learning models capable of expressing the uncertainty in their predictions in a clearer manner. It’s an exploratory approach to make artificial intelligence more transparent, measure the reliability of its predictions and  fine tune the accuracy of its results.

The past 12-months have seen significant evolutions in the way BBVA uses technology to provide banking products and services. This is a selection of this year’s BBVA digital transformation highlights.

Garanti BBVA is partnering with BELBİM Elektronik Para ve Ödeme Hizmetleri A.Ş., to go the extra mile when it comes to innovation. Garanti BBVA’s  mobile app can now be used to refill Istanbul travel cards, allowing customers to move around the city without worrying about the balance on their card.

The new global partnership will enable BBVA to optimize data storage and processing capabilities that drive its commitment towards innovation in financial services.

Google claims that its quantum computer has been able to perform a calculation in a matter of seconds, a task that would take a traditional computer thousands of years. Even though quantum processors currently only handle simple problems, they are expected to have a significant impact on the future of the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and banking industries.

Will connected cars need their own bank account? The BBVA New Digital Businesses (NDB) unit is working to anticipate the opportunities and challenges that will arise in the financial industry when the Internet of Things (IoT) makes it possible to manage transactions directly among objects, people and organizations.

Ride sharing giant Uber yesterday announced it was launching a new venture, Uber Money, becoming the latest big tech business to move deeper into financial services.

BBVA’s Turkish bank recently participated in the Mobile Market Association’s Impact Istanbul event. Executive Vice President Didem Dinçer Başer represented the bank at the conference, where she discussed the transformational role of mobile technology and mobile marketing in the finance sector.

The world of banking is continuing to undergo a paradigm shift in terms of the way it operates and the products and services it delivers. BBVA’s Global Head of New Digital Businesses (NDB), Ian Ormerod, outlines the strategies NDB enacts to build the future of banking, and how uncertainty is a key driver for its growth.

The roll-out of networks with speeds far superior to 4G will improve customer experience and allow for real time information processing, making communications more secure.

According to a KPMG report, payments will retain its position as the most significant area for fintech investment in the coming years. Regtech, cybersecurity, wealthtech and proptech are other sectors on the rise. These are areas of innovation and development that the BBVA Open Talent team is also seeing, as part of the around 800 entries to this year’s BBVA Open Talent Competition, the world’s biggest fintech competition.

Big data is having a huge impact on the business world, and consequently it is becoming an integral part of corporate DNA. Aware of the benefits derived from this technology, businesses have resolved to recruit professionals who can manage and analyze vast quantities of data. The goal is to offer more personalized solutions to customers.

Is it possible to show that something is true without revealing the data that proves it? This is what ‘Zero Knowledge Proof’ technology proposes, a technique which employs cryptographic algorithms so that various parties can verify the veracity of an item of information without sharing the data that compose it.

Soccer fandom is sweeping the nation, from the World Cup victory by the U.S. Women’s National Team to thrilling matches in Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League to the thousands of fans who pack pubs and bars to watch matches from around the world every weekend. But in sports, the game itself is no longer all that attracts fans to the arena. Tech-savvy millennials expect an “Instagrammable,” in-stadium experience, or else they’ll stay back and watch at home. Recognizing the demands of its growing fan base, Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo and the National Women’s Soccer League’s Houston Dash selected Extreme Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR) Smart OmniEdge™ solution to provide high-density, professional-grade Wi-Fi connectivity in its home field, BBVA Stadium. The free fan Wi-Fi experience is presented by BBVA USA.

Experts in telecommunications, industrial engineering, and IT have developed the artificial intelligence that gives Google Assistant, Siri, and Bixby their voices. The most common techniques used to generate responses are based on templates that contain changing parameters.

Garanti BBVA’s data center, formerly located in Istanbul’s Güneşli district, has moved to an Uptime Institute Tier IV certified building in Pendik, also in Istanbul.

Some organizations foment innovation in the contexts that dictate the present. But innovation is intimately tied to the future and variations of the future. Thus, inspiring creativity is also offering ideas about what is possible and forthcoming. Perhaps this is the key to true realism.

Garanti BBVA’s Mobile app is a good example of how the bank is making its customers’ lives easier. All these efforts contribute to the bank’s customer-centric focus by ensuring that its tailor-made services are available – any time and any place – to both its individual and corporate customers.

Antonio Herráiz is a firm believer in innovation focused on results, especially if it generates a positive impact for people. Thanks to him, more than 7,000 of the Group’s employees across the globe have attended BBVA’s Process Academy.

BBVA and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have signed a collaboration agreement to jointly explore the applications of quantum technologies in the financial sector.

In the formal launch event of BBVA’s new global development center specializing in artificial intelligence, the leaders of the three areas that have worked together to create it – Data, Engineering and Client Solutions – shared with the team their vision and goals to materialize the impact of this technology across the organization.

BBVA will today launch a new program designed to foster even greater success among the fintech start-up ecosystem it engages with.

AI Factory is the global development center where BBVA builds the artificial intelligence capabilities that power both its customer solutions – for both the retail and corporate segments – and the Group’s streamlined internal processes. The new structure brings together, under the same roof, a cross-disciplinary team consisting of data scientists, teams from the Engineering area, and representatives from other business areas.

BBVA USA launched its real time ARP and PositivePay products last year in a milestone that was both ground-breaking and game-changing.

BBVA and Dufry have launched the first WeChat Pay facilities in Spain, in the travel retail operator’s World Duty Free stores at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas airport, in a dedicated bid to make Chinese tourists feel more welcome while on tour.

A new strategy and narrower focus will help BBVA Open Innovation build on its 2018 successes.