Invisible impact: How smart and secure digital solutions created in Estonia are changing the world
Milton, Proekspert’s AI assistant, helped formulate the interview questions. Our marketing team gave Milton the following prompt as the basis for the interview: “Create three journalistic questions related to the invisible impact of digitalization, sustainability, and security.” This is how the questions were born, which Ilmar Pralla, Proekspert’s COO / Member of the Board, answered.
Milton: Ilmar, digitalization is discussed daily but is often associated with visible consumer solutions or the simplification of everyday life. How important is the sustainability and responsibility side? How does Proekspert contribute here?
Ilmar Pralla: When we talk about digitalization, we tend to think primarily of visible applications – web portals or phone apps. However, many digital solutions that affect our everyday lives operate automatically in the background and remain unnoticed: heating in our homes, ventilation, elevators in office buildings, electricity- and water networks, and production line management in industrial plants. At Proekspert, we focus on solutions that keep our society running in the background. We create solutions that make our lives easier and our devices more energy-efficient and safer.
One example is our cooperation with a European green technology company. We gave this client’s heating and air conditioning devices the ability to calculate NordPool electricity spot market exchange prices and automatically schedule energy consumption to more favorable periods. The result is lower costs for the user, lower peak loads for the energy system, and a decreasing need for fossil fuels. This is precisely how digitalizing devices helps save resources and moves toward a greener living environment.
As another example, our software helps optimize the operation of hundreds of thousands of industrial electric motors around the world. We help reduce the need for technicians to make maintenance trips using real-time remote management and data analytics. Again, the result of such digitalization is lower energy consumption, a cleaner environment and lower costs.
Milton: The more complex the system, the greater the risks – that’s why security is more important than ever. How does Proekspert help meet these challenges?
IP: It’s true that the increasing number of cyber threats, and new regulations and international standards created in response to them, are making life increasingly complicated for every technology company. It’s easy to see this as annoying bureaucracy, but these requirements help us build a stronger and more resilient digital environment. This is especially important in industry and critical services, where unexpected failures or cybersecurity incidents can affect entire cities and communities.
Our engineers help international manufacturing companies map security risks and vulnerabilities, conduct compliance assessments, and create secure software solutions. For example, we help manage devices’ digital identities and have developed solutions that ensure that software updates to devices come from the device manufacturer and not from malicious third parties. In doing so, we help protect the devices and systems around us, both for users and businesses.
We often say, “Build so that no one even has to think about it.” The goal is to make technology as secure as possible daily and operate smoothly in home and industrial environments. At the same time, we must always be vigilant and keep up with the times because cybersecurity requires constant attention and cooperation.
Milton: Now, thinking about the future, what is Proekspert’s responsibility, and what is your most significant contribution?
IP: We have a clear vision: although our team is not large on the world stage, our impact is far reaching through our services to our customers. We work with major European industries whose equipment determines a significant portion of the world’s resource use and energy flows. Our work makes widely used devices smarter and more efficient, thereby reducing the environmental burden. Sustainability is central to our service, not just a trendy keyword.
We develop systems that can be flexibly updated and have a long lifespan. We avoid unnecessary waste, and we consider each solution’s environmental impact and energy consumption from the beginning of development. At the same time, we never compromise at the expense of safety.
We are an honest and transparent partner who offers the best technological solutions and carries a sustainable mindset. Every day, we see how the technologies we develop make life more comfortable, greener, and safer in different parts of the world, and that is why we know we are on the right track. And since many of these changes happen “in the background” for the average person, we can say that the more imperceptibly everything works, the better we have done our job.
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