Mariano Nuñez

"Imagine that a cyber-hacker enters the system used by a company to pay its employees and suppliers, manages sales and organize its production line. Unnoticed by administrators, the hacker could create a backdoor with privileges to access sensitive data and control over critical business functions.

Mariano Nuñez, a systems engineer and a graduate of the National Technological University (Argentina), had worked for about 4 years as a consultant in various fields of computer security when he became this hacker. Nuñez explains, “I was assigned to review the security of a web application that was running within a SAP system, and I began to detect vulnerabilities that were not caused by mistakes made by the clients but rather in the platform that was used as the base code'

In 2009, Nuñez launched his company Onapsis, through which he commercialized the first software that delivers automated security testing on the SAP NetWeaver platform, the basis of practically all SAP solutions (including ERP). His technology not only serves to test the ERP platform designed by the German giant but it can also incorporate modules to verify the safety in systems from other providers. According to Núñez, in 2013 they will launch modules to protect ERP systems of Oracle, like the E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft.

In July of this year Nuñez launched Onapsis IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), a software program designed to prevent attacks on complementary Oracle modules, which conducts “proactive safety analysis” and can detect and stop attacks before they impact vulnerable ERP systems.

For this award-winning young man, the greater social impact of his innovation is that it minimizes the probability of success of the cyber-attacks made against systems that are vital to everyday life for millions of people, “like sabotage attempts against a country or major corporations and agencies”."