Month: January 2023

During the pandemic, Tita Ardiati and Bayu Puspito Bhaskoro began developing life coaching content to support employees who were increasingly burned out by working from home. They got a good enough reception that they decided to develop their product into an employee assistance program called Mindtera, which now serves more than 10,000 employees in Indonesia.

Today, the startup announced total seed funding of $850,000 led by East Ventures, with participation from Seedstars International Ventures and angel investors.

Bhaskoro told TechCrunch that the startup is focused on B2B markets, including mid- to large enterprises. It also provides a self-service platform for small- to medium enterprises. Its main sectors are finance, consulting and retail, and its typical client has more than 200 employees.

Mindtera aims to support employees with challenges related to their work, and also in their personal lives like finances, family and relationships. Companies, on the other hand, get insights about what employees want and how to create a more engaged and productive workforce.

Mindtera includes two platforms. The first, called Mindtera Pro, is an analytics dashboard and app with assessment tools to collect employee feedback, which is then used for insights about the well-being and engagement of a company’s workforce. This includes surveys that let employees participate anonymously or use their names. They can provide suggestions, criticism and other opinions about their work and employer.

The second, Mindtera Plus, connects companies to coaching and development consultants for help with management and workplace culture issues. Employers have the option of either subscribing to Mindtera Plus for a continuous action plan, or working with consultants on demand. Mindtera Plus uses internal consultants, external certified consultants and curated partners, who provide strategic program plans and monthly or quarterly progress reports for clients.

Bhaskoro said Mindtera’s main competitors are EAPs based outside of Indonesia, and traditional workforce consulting agencies. The main way that Mindtera differentiates is by giving employers real-time monitoring on how engaged employees are, instead of making them wait for reports. Mindtera Pro also gives them more visibility into spending on activities, vendors or platforms that they use as interventions to improve productivity and performance.

The newunding will be used to expand Mindtera’s B2B platform, with the goal of becoming Indonesia’s top employee assistance program platform.

In a statement about the funding, Seedstars International Ventures general partner Patricia Sosrodjojo, said, “The world has seen a major shift in the understanding of how integral mental health and well-being are for businesses, but there is still much work to be done in order to effectively address this. Mindtera is at the forefront of foundational changes in the workplace and has been able to rapidly expand its reach in Indonesia’s HR space.”

Jakarta-based Mindtera helps companies keep an eye on employee morale by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The website for ODIN Intelligence, a company that provides technology and tools for law enforcement and police departments, was defaced on Sunday.

The apparent hack comes days after Wired reported that an app developed by the company, SweepWizard, which allows police to manage and coordinate multi-agency raids, had a significant security vulnerability that exposed personal information of police suspects and sensitive details of upcoming police operations to the open web.

ODIN provides apps, like SweepWizard and other technologies, to law enforcement departments. It also provides a service called SONAR, or the Sex Offender Notification and Registration system, used by state and local law enforcement to remotely manage registered sex offenders. But the company has also been the subject of controversy. Last year, ODIN was found to be marketing its facial recognition technology for identifying homeless people and describing those capabilities in callous and degrading terms.

It’s not clear who defaced ODIN’s website or how the intruders broke in, but a message left behind quoted ODIN founder and chief executive Erik McCauley, who largely dismissed Wired’s recent reporting that found the SweepWizard app was insecure and spilling data.

“And so, we decided to hack them,” the message left on ODIN’s website said.

The text of the defacement is ambiguous as to whether the hackers exfiltrated data from ODIN’s systems or if, as it claims, “all data and backups have been shredded,” suggesting that there may have been an attempt to erase the company’s stores of data. But the defacement note made note of three large archive files, totaling more than 16 gigabytes of data, each named in relation to ODIN, the sex offenders’ data, and the SweepWizard app, suggesting that the hackers may have at least had access to the company’s data.

The defacement also included a set of Amazon Web Services keys, apparently belonging to ODIN. TechCrunch could not immediately confirm that the keys belong to ODIN, but the keys apparently correspond with an instance on AWS’ GovCloud, which houses more sensitive police and law enforcement data.

ODIN chief executive Erik McCauley did not return emails from TechCrunch with questions about the defacement and apparent breach, but ODIN’s defaced website was pulled offline a short time later.

ODIN Intelligence website is defaced as hackers claim breach by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

Thousands of Norton LifeLock customers had their accounts compromised in recent weeks, potentially allowing criminal hackers access to customer password managers, the company revealed in a recent data breach notice.

In a notice to customers, Gen Digital, the parent company of Norton LifeLock, said that the likely culprit was a credential stuffing attack — where previously exposed or breached credentials are used to break into accounts on different sites and services that share the same passwords — rather than a compromise of its systems. It’s why two-factor authentication, which Norton LifeLock offers, is recommended, as it blocks attackers from accessing someone’s account with just their password.

The company said it found that the intruders had compromised accounts as far back as December 1, close to two weeks before its systems detected a “large volume” of failed logins to customer accounts on December 12.

“In accessing your account with your username and password, the unauthorized third party may have viewed your first name, last name, phone number, and mailing address,” the data breach notice said. The notice was sent to customers that it believes use its password manager feature, because the company cannot rule out that the intruders also accessed customers’ saved passwords.

Gen Digital said it sent notices to about 6,450 customers whose accounts were compromised.

Norton LifeLock provides identity protection and cybersecurity services. It’s the latest incident involving the theft of customer passwords of late. Earlier this year, password manager giant LastPass confirmed a data breach in which intruders compromised its cloud storage and stole millions of customers’ encrypted password vaults. In 2021, the company behind a popular enterprise password manager called Passwordstate was hacked to push a tainted software update to its customers, allowing the cybercriminals to steal customers’ passwords.

That said, password managers are still widely recommended by security professionals for generating and storing unique passwords, so long as the appropriate precautions and protections are put in place to limit the fallout in the event of a compromise.

Norton LifeLock says thousands of customer accounts breached by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

Hello, climate tech readers! Even without a milestone fusion announcement this week, plenty happened in the climate tech world that’s worth catching up on. From massive solar investments to plant-based steaks and small, modular batteries to back up your home, there’s something for everyone. Let’s dive in.

US solar manufacturing gets boost with $2.5B Georgia deal

Last year was chock full of battery manufacturers and automakers announcing one gigafactory after another. If this week’s announcement is anything to go by, 2023 might be the year the U.S. solar industry ramps up in a serious way.

On Wednesday, Hanwha Qcells, a major Korean manufacturer, announced that it would spend $2.5 billion in Georgia to expand an existing factory and build an entirely new campus that would handle nearly everything in the solar panel supply chain, from silicon ingots to finished panels. The move was spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, which offers investment and production tax credits that should help cover about half the cost of a finished panel, helping to erase some of China’s cost advantage.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has attempted to bolster homegrown solar. But unlike a decade ago, when dozens of companies went bust because of slack demand, cheap Chinese panels and the Great Recession, this time might be different.

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How companies at CES are taking on climate change (or pretending to)

TechCrunch’s Harri Weber made the trek to CES this year, and she saw plenty of climate tech at the massive trade show, which has expanded well beyond VR headsets and home automation (though that’s still there, too.) From smart hoses and sprinklers to minimize water use to home energy systems, there was plenty to be optimistic about — though there was still some AstroTurf, too, both on the show floor and in what was being hawked in the booths.

Project Eaden’s fiber technology poised to spin threads into whole cuts of ‘meat’

Plant-based meat has had a rough few months, with industry leaders getting hammered in the markets. But not everyone is bearish on the sector. Project Eaden showed why this week, adding €2.1 million in funding to an existing seed round.

The Berlin-based startup uses plant-based protein fibers to spin cuts of alternative meat that have a texture that’s much closer to the real thing. Project Eaden has just over €10 million in funding to refine its technology, and it’s planning on future rounds to build a production-scale plant.

Climate benefits of killing gas stoves aren’t what you think, but the health benefits are

It’s no secret that gas stoves are terrible for your health — asthma rates in households that have gas stoves are significantly higher than those without. They’re also not great for the climate. Even though their emissions footprint is small, they let aging gas utilities keep their feet in the door, making it easier for homeowners to keep their fossil fuel systems running long after they should.

But why are we talking about gas stoves this week? U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Rich Trumka Jr. made a comment about how they’re a “hidden hazard” and that “any option is on the table” if the industry couldn’t figure out how to clean up its act. Well, that brought the wolves out. Right-wing politicians latched onto Trumka’s statement, hoping to create a new flashpoint in the ongoing culture wars. That might backfire, though, as gas-owning, induction-curious consumers start looking into the matter themselves.

John Deere will let farmers repair their own equipment

The right-to-repair movement got a shot in the arm this week when John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation that would grant access to tools and repair information needed by farmers and other operators to fix the company’s increasingly complex equipment without going through the manufacturer.

For farmers and independent repair shops, it’s not a perfect deal, however, because Deere said it would still withhold “trade secrets, proprietary or confidential information.” But given that Deere has long pushed back against right-to-repair requests, this is likely welcome news for farmers, operators and independent shops. And it’ll likely help keep well-functioning equipment in the fields longer.

A big CES 2023 trend: All battery power, everywhere, all the time

It’s happening: Batteries are taking over. I’ve long anticipated that the sheer amount of R&D and manufacturing capacity wrought by the shift to electric vehicles would spill over to transform myriad other sectors. If this year’s CES is anything to go by, we’ve reached an inflection point.

TechCrunch’s Haje Jan Kamps was bowled over by the number and diversity of battery-based home power solutions at the show this year. Many were stackable. One could be wheeled around your house like a 100-pound wagon. Another carried like a milk crate. And yet another ties into a whole-home system that includes a solar inverter, smart circuit panel, EV chargers and more. If you don’t have a battery in your home yet, you might in the next five years if this CES was anything to go by.

Climate tech roundup: From solar to CES, this week had something for everyone by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch