Latest news with #VykintasMaknickas
IOL News
3 days ago
- IOL News
Don't let hackers crash your vacation: cyber safety tips for travellers
Before you connect to the airport Wi-Fi, make sure that you have protected yourself from online hackers looking to swipe your information. A recent study by cybersecurity experts NordVPN and Saily has uncovered just how vulnerable travellers are. From stolen passport scans to hacked frequent flyer accounts, criminals are cashing in on a booming black market of personal travel data, and the cost of your identity on the dark web might be far lower than you'd expect. As international travel surges, so too does cybercrime aimed at unsuspecting travellers. Stolen travel documents are being bought and sold online for as little as $10 (R177), while verified EU passports can command prices of over $5,000 (R88 513). Fake visa stickers, forged bank statements, and loyalty accounts loaded with travel miles are also being traded for hundreds of dollars. Even confirmed reservations are being resold for upwards of $250 (R4 426). 'The staggering prices we're seeing on the dark web show just how valuable and vulnerable travellers' personal information has become,' says Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN. How cybercriminals steal travel data The methods used to steal travel information are wide-ranging and alarmingly simple. Cybercriminals often deploy malware that scans your devices and cloud storage for sensitive files. Phishing sites, which closely mimic real airline, hotel, or visa application websites, trick users into uploading personal documents and ID scans. Travellers are also at risk due to data breaches at airlines, travel agencies, and online booking platforms, which can leak entire passenger profiles. Even publicly accessible cloud folders with weak permissions can be easily discovered and exploited. In more advanced cases, criminals are turning to AI-generated scams to mimic legitimate requests. These include fake Wi-Fi login pages at airports, phoney lounge access portals, or even requests for selfies alongside ID documents, made to look like they come from official sources. 'With AI tools now easily accessible to criminals, these phishing attempts have become simple to create, remarkably convincing, and difficult to detect,' warns Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of Saily. Why travel documents are so valuable According to these experts, travel documents are a goldmine for hackers. Many digital services and identity checks only require a passport scan and a selfie, which criminals can fake using deepfake technology. With the right data, including full name, date of birth, passport number, email address, phone number, and emergency contacts, hackers can: Commit identity theft Open fraudulent bank accounts or credit lines Apply for loans Launch highly targeted phishing or social engineering attacks 'Travel documents offer direct access to your identity with minimal barriers, making stolen travel data incredibly dangerous,' Briedis explains.
Forbes
14-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Flywheel Effect And It How It Nurtures Next-Gen Entrepreneurs
Saily CEO, Vykintas Maknickas, says working in a company-within-a-company setup is like being in a ... More big accelerator. According to a recent report by VC firm Accel and market intelligence provider Dealroom, 281 unicorn companies in Europe and Israel have been collectively responsible for the launch of more than 2,000 new tech startups. The logic behind the research - which I covered last month is this. As startup businesses morph into scaleups, their key employees gain experience and start to develop business ideas of their own. The result is an ever-increasing number of new companies, led by people who understand their chosen markets and the realities of growing a startup. This is the much sought-after flywheel effect. But how does it play out in practice? Well, one important factor is the willingness of scaling companies - some of them at least - to assign leadership roles to team members as they develop new products or explore hitherto untapped market opportunities. Projects of this kind provide an opportunity for today's employees to acquire the insights, skills and market know-how that will help them become tomorrow's entrepreneurs. In some cases an individual chooses to move on and start a new business. But there may also be an opportunity to take charge of a company within a company. That's the route taken by Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of eSim venture Saily, a business that sits within the portfolio of Lithuanian scaleup Nord Security. And as Maknickas sees it, there are some real practical advantages to building a company under the umbrella of a larger parent. 'You don't need to think about the office. You don't need to worry about where the tables come from. You don't need to worry about the IT stuff. You mostly focus on product, marketing and delivery. It's like being in a big accelerator,' he says. Saily operates as an independent brand, with its own CEO, as part of Nord Security. As Head of Strategy within that organisation, Maknickas researched new business opportunities. During that time, he identified eSims - virtual sim cards - as a promising, under-developed and potentially lucrative market. He pitched the idea to Nord Security's founders and Saily was born. So how difficult was the sell? Maknickas says Nord Security is open to proposals from team members but that doesn't necessarily equate with taking a leadership role. 'The founders are very open to everyone pitching,' he says. 'Execution is a different matter. You may not be the best person to execute, so that could be tricky.' Once a business has been given the green light and a leadership role asigned, there are further advantages to being part of a bigger organisation, not least in terms of resourcing. For instance, staff can be shared across different teams. Typically, a company may have seven or eight full time people, such as developers. Other roles can be split between business units. 'For intance, you don't necessarily need your own graphic artist,' says Maknickas, 'but you do need dedicated product and marketing people.' For the parent company, there is an opportunity to find new customers and revenue streams. At the same time, there can be an overlap between the new company's product and the parent's core offer. For instance, Nord Security is best known for its VPN and security solutions. Saily's main customer case is travellers who want to keep roaming costs down, but in addition to the eSIM functionality, the company has built in VPN/Security features. Thus reputation, credibility and and knowhow can be extended into adjacent markets. Of course, not everyone will have an opportunity to form a company within a company. The flywheel effect is also - and perhaps mainly - driven by those who spend time working for one or more technology startups before launching their own ventures. David Villalon is co-founder and CEO of Maisa, an agentic AI startup that has raised $5 million in pre-seed finance. Prior to forming Maisa with Manuel Romero, Villalon worked as Head of Product at VoiceMod and Chief AI Officer at Clidrive. Having held senior positions in Spanish technology companies, he applied his insights into creating a company that has adopted - as he characterizes it - a new approach to AI. Maisa is aimed at businesses in regulated industries, such as energy, finance and manufacturing. As he explains, the AI is designed to automate key tasks while being fully transparent around the decision making and execution process. As such it can be trusted to carry out tasks that require accuracy and accountability. The key insight that he took from his previous roles was the lack of customer trust in a technology they didn't really understand. 'Clients were telling me, we don't understand this. We hear this is great but we don't know what to do with it and we don't have the know-how,' he recalls. When Villalon and Romero founded Maisa they felt they had a clear idea of what theirtarget customers were looking for. 'We thought about what kind of messaging they were looking for, what kind of products, what kind of leaders and what kind of thought leadership.' Added to that was the practical operational acquired in previous roles. 'During our time at Voicemod we saw hyperscaling. We went from a small team to over 100 in a year and half. That gives you insights. You learn you have to build a solid company. You have to create processes that are agile. I learned how to hyperscale from a team and resources perspective,' he says. Perhaps the question facing entrepreneurially minded employees who develop their own ideas is 'should I stay or should I go.' There are advantages to both approaches, but what can't be denied is that experience in the technology sector is helping a new generation of CEOs and founders to build companies on a foundation of operational and market knowledge.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NordVPN's travel eSIM app, Saily, preserves nearly 30% of mobile data, independent audit confirms
LONDON, April 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saily, a travel eSIM app by the company behind NordVPN, has just completed third party testing of its ad blocker technology benefits. The test performed by West Coast Labs, a leading independent testing lab, showed that Saily's ad blocker saves users 28.6% of mobile data. This means that by preventing users from downloading irrelevant ads targeting audiences in the country of travel, Saily enforces saving mobile data and money. Saily's ad blocker, powered by NordVPN's Threat Protection and working on a network level, applies DNS filtering to block ads and malicious domains. It prevents websites from loading intrusive ads, and saves data while ensuring a smooth browsing experience. 'While traveling abroad, users are often exposed to ads in local languages they do not even understand. They pay to see this irrelevant content by buying and using their mobile data. An independent audit confirmed that Saily's ad blocker preserves nearly 30% of mobile data bought by users. In other words, a web-browsing user with a 5 GB plan could expect 1.43 GB of data savings. With these savings, the cost per gigabyte becomes lower too, which is a fair deal from the perspective of the consumer,' says Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of Saily. To perform the testing, researchers visited 22 various websites, ranging from shopping, gaming, travel, entertainment, and others — all commonly found on lists of most visited websites globally. They measured the total amount of data sent and received until the website fully loaded and the network traffic stabilized. Researchers recorded having used 276.3MB without Saily's ad blocker, and 184.1MB when it was enabled, signifying a 28.6% reduction. Researchers also compared Saily's data usage to the industry averages, which were calculated based on the performance of four other travel eSIM service providers. During the testing process, Saily, with ad blocker enabled, used less data in every website visited. 'Internal testing showed similar results, but third party testing is necessary for ensuring our high security and reliability standards,' says Maknickas, referring to previously done internal calculations. Saily's data shows that the ad blocker and tracker protection protects an average user from 220 ads and trackers over the course of a single day, while the highest individual user accounts for 16,171 blocks. Saily's ad blocker is a part of a set of security features that are unique in the eSIM service market. In addition, Saily's users benefit from web protection, which employs DNS filters to block potentially malicious domains, and virtual location, a feature that allows users to choose their virtual location from a list of 115+ countries. These features, implemented at the network level, eliminate the need for complex setup or additional applications for enhanced cybersafety. They are available to all users at no extra cost, after the purchase of any of the available plans. ABOUT SAILYSaily, brought to you by the creators of NordVPN, is a travel eSIM, offering affordable data for international travel. It offers hundreds of affordable travel data plans in over 200 destinations, unique security features, quick setup and 24/7 chat support. For more information: More information: egidijus@
Associated Press
18-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
NordVPN's travel eSIM app, Saily, preserves nearly 30% of mobile data, independent audit confirms
LONDON, April 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saily, a travel eSIM app by the company behind NordVPN, has just completed third party testing of its ad blocker technology benefits. The test performed by West Coast Labs, a leading independent testing lab, showed that Saily's ad blocker saves users 28.6% of mobile data. This means that by preventing users from downloading irrelevant ads targeting audiences in the country of travel, Saily enforces saving mobile data and money. Saily's ad blocker, powered by NordVPN's Threat Protection and working on a network level, applies DNS filtering to block ads and malicious domains. It prevents websites from loading intrusive ads, and saves data while ensuring a smooth browsing experience. 'While traveling abroad, users are often exposed to ads in local languages they do not even understand. They pay to see this irrelevant content by buying and using their mobile data. An independent audit confirmed that Saily's ad blocker preserves nearly 30% of mobile data bought by users. In other words, a web-browsing user with a 5 GB plan could expect 1.43 GB of data savings. With these savings, the cost per gigabyte becomes lower too, which is a fair deal from the perspective of the consumer,' says Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of Saily. To perform the testing, researchers visited 22 various websites, ranging from shopping, gaming, travel, entertainment, and others — all commonly found on lists of most visited websites globally. They measured the total amount of data sent and received until the website fully loaded and the network traffic stabilized. Researchers recorded having used 276.3MB without Saily's ad blocker, and 184.1MB when it was enabled, signifying a 28.6% reduction. Researchers also compared Saily's data usage to the industry averages, which were calculated based on the performance of four other travel eSIM service providers. During the testing process, Saily, with ad blocker enabled, used less data in every website visited. 'Internal testing showed similar results, but third party testing is necessary for ensuring our high security and reliability standards,' says Maknickas, referring to previously done internal calculations. Saily's data shows that the ad blocker and tracker protection protects an average user from 220 ads and trackers over the course of a single day, while the highest individual user accounts for 16,171 blocks. Saily's ad blocker is a part of a set of security features that are unique in the eSIM service market. In addition, Saily's users benefit from web protection, which employs DNS filters to block potentially malicious domains, and virtual location, a feature that allows users to choose their virtual location from a list of 115+ countries. These features, implemented at the network level, eliminate the need for complex setup or additional applications for enhanced cybersafety. They are available to all users at no extra cost, after the purchase of any of the available plans. ABOUT SAILY Saily, brought to you by the creators of NordVPN, is a travel eSIM, offering affordable data for international travel. It offers hundreds of affordable travel data plans in over 200 destinations, unique security features, quick setup and 24/7 chat support. For more information: More information:[email protected]
