SAP has denied reports that it is working with the NSA to support the agency’s mass surveillance capabilities within its own big data technologies.
The company over the weekend responded to recent reports in German media about a partnership with the NSA relating to its HANA in-memory database platform and other technologies, saying the reports were “misleading and flawed”.
The reports highlighted the role that SAP subsidiaries – such as SAP National Security Services 2 in the US, which serves Government clients – had in supporting the surveillance activities of law enforcement agencies with SAP’s Inxight, Sybase and HANA products. The largest customer of Sybase is the NSA, while HANA software allows for the processing of huge volumes of data.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott denied the claims, and said the company did not customise its software for specific clients. “There are no so-called backdoors built into SAP software and customer data cannot be retrieved externally. No company is more committed to data privacy and security than SAP,” he said in a statement.
SAP is listed as one of the NSA’s contractors alongside Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northcorp.
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