To commemorate F-Secure’s 30th year of innovation, we’re profiling 30 of our fellows from our more than 25 offices around the globe.
“Brazilian people love social media!” Luciana Marques, F-Secure’s Senior Marketing Manager for Operator Sales in Latin America, explains.
And she has evidence. “We have 207 million people and 140 million internet users. Somehow we have 115 percent mobile penetration, with most of them being prepaid mobile users,” she says.
It’s also the country with the second most Instagram users and the third most Facebook users.
“The main concern is being connected,” she says. “Security is important, but it’s a distant second to being able to access your favorite apps and sites anywhere at any time.”
This is just one reason that Luciana’s job is a unique challenge.
Not only does she have to work to educate users about emerging threats, she has to constantly slip from language to language. She’s charged with working with operator providers to provide security services across the entire continent and this has her constantly shifting from Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and English. She also has to deal 20 different countries, thus 20 different markets and cultures, along with with three different time zones.
It’s a monumental task she’s been preparing for since near the turn of the millennium. Her career in tech began in 2003, when she started with the largest internet portal in Brazil. She moved on to work in multimedia and then found online security.
And though she works south of the Equator, she finds that F-Secure’s Nordic roots still play a major role in her work life, especially the focus on teamwork.
“Our team is group of friends that works together to reach the same goal. Everybody helps everybody,” she says. “This is not at all standard in Latin American or Brazilian companies. Fellowship is the real keyword here!”
And this mentality also makes relationships with operations about more than sales. “F-Secure has the best cooperative relationship with partners,” she says and she credits this to the company’s commitment to transparency.
She notes that endpoint security and the expectation that every phone or PC should be protected are commonplace in Latin America as they are all over the world. This is why she’s excited about protecting connected home devices.
“The IoT market is very promising because there’s a considerable percentage of early adopters and innovation seekers in the continent,” she says.
But she also feels that many Latin Americans don’t quite get the risks of their always connected lifestyles.
“It’s important to educate about the importance of the safe connections at public Wi-Fi and the importance of privacy.”
As someone whose job constantly requires transporting her mind from place to place and time to time, she can see technology playing a key role in transforming the future.
“I hope that technology enhanced with AI could help us improve medicine and find cures to mortal diseases, while advancing fields like prosthetics,” she says. “I also would like to see virtual reality playing an increased role in education.”
And as a runner and someone who cares about her performance, she’s inspired by the evolution of gadgets that combine heart monitors with GPS and training trackers.
“I can say for sure that these devices help me and my coach as I improve and evolve.”
Given that she’s Brazilian, it’s not too surprising that she enjoys being connected even when she’s competing.
And check out our open positions if you want to join Luciana and the hundreds of other great fellows fighting to keep internet users safe from online threats.
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