SAP is to circumvent any spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Brazil by building data centres in the South American country.
In documents aired by Brazil's biggest television network, Globo, the NSA had a presentation dated May 2012 that was used to show new NSA employees how to spy on private computer networks.
Further reading NSA tapped into networks of Google, Brazilian oil firm, among others NSA bought zero-day vulnerabilities from security company Vupen Apple iPhones, Android and even BlackBerry smartphones all compromised by NSA
The slides had suggested the NSA had tapped into the network of Brazilan oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
The firm is a major customer of SAP's and SAP's managing director of Southern Latin America, Diego Dzosan, suggested that as a result of recent revelations about the NSA's involvement in Brazil, SAP will ensure that it keeps all of its Brazilian customer data within Brazilian territory; it is currently housed in the US.
Dzosan was speaking at SAP's Innovation Tour in Brazil, and believes that the Brazilian government's stance on the privacy of data, even prior to the NSA revelations, has always been clear.
"Brazil has had a very strong policy in recent years for both private and public companies, in how they store and access data securely. It has a long tradition of that, and our industry has been evolving in line with a lot of those government guidelines," he said.
He claimed that SAP, which is headquartered in Germany, can fall in line with the Brazlian government's regulatory framework with a cloud solution but that the first step for the firm is to work with local partners.
"We don't currently have our own data centres in Brazil, so our first step is to work with local partners to give us a short-term solution, building data centres takes some time, so you need immediate capacity, and we will eventually own our own data centres ," Dzosan stated.
Relations between Brazil and the US have been strained since the NSA was alleged to have spied on the phone calls and emails of Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff.
Brazilian authorities have reportedly demanded a formal apology, and Rousseff met with US president Barack Obama at the G20 meeting in Russia a few weeks ago, where he said he would investigate the allegations.
