PSC-PSI and USANA Join Forces to Help Raise Over-All Health Program

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Elite Filipino Athletes to Benefit from USANA Nutritionals 

USANA Health Sciences, a global nutritional company, announced today that its Philippines subsidiary UHS Essential Health Phils. Inc. (locally known as USANA) has entered a partnership with the Philippine Sports Commission-Philippine Sports Institute (PSC-PSI) for the health improvement of 300 elite national athletes.

PSC Chairman William Ramirez says the partnership is in line with the commission’s vision to promote sports and athletics among our youth as well as improve the national athletics program.

“The timing of this partnership with USANA could not have been more perfect. We are in full swing with our preparations for the upcoming international competition and adding USANA’s high-quality nutritional supplements to our athletes’ health program will help in their training while reaching optimal health as well,” says Chairman Ramirez.

“It is a privilege to work with the PSC-PSI in their goal to get our athletes ready to represent our country in the international sports arena. We are proud that we are able to provide Filipino athletes the same pharmacy-grade, safe, NSF-certified and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)-approved nutritional products being enjoyed by world-class athletes,” says Aurora Gaston, USANA Vice-President for Philippines and Indonesia. “This partnership is our commitment to the Philippine market who has helped our company become the leader in nutrition here and abroad.

USANA will provide their three top products namely Essentials™ Pack, CoQuinone®30, and Procosa® to the identified beneficiaries for two years.



The USANA Advantage

USANA Essentials™ work from the most basic building blocks — at the cellular level — with the right amount of nutrients, minerals, and antioxidants every day to improve your health from the cell up.

CoQuinone®30 is all about energy, on the cellular level. USANA combined alpha-lipoic acid with coenzyme Q10 to create CoQuinone 30, a fantastic supplement of these energy-supporting nutrients. The benefits associated with these nutrients include sound muscle function, healthy nerve function, and good cardiovascular health.

Lastly, Procosa® supports optimal joint health and activates the cell's natural ability to protect and renew itself. The combination of glucosamine and Meriva in the InCelligence Joint-Support Complex helps to influence the signaling pathways that proactively promote an optimal immune and inflammatory response to restore normal function after exercise.

“These 3 products have proven their effectivity by athletes around the world, and we are happy that our fellow countrymen will have them during their training,” added Gaston.

To foster transparency on the implementation of the partnership, the products will be distributed directly to the 300 national athletes throughout the two-year partnership.

This is not the first-time that the nutritional company has given its support to the Filipino athlete. Through its Team USANA Pilipinas campaign, over 30 national athletes in the past and until now have received sponsorship from USANA, namely Rio Olympics weightlifting silver medalist Hidilyn Diaz, SEA Games Gold Medalist Nikko Huelgas, Philippine Azkals top footballer Misagh Bahadoran, Star Hotshots player Peter June Simon, Ginebra San Miguel Beer's LA Tenorio and former world pool champion Rubilen Amit, to name a few.

This sponsorship is an additional initiative to USANA’s on-going advocacy in helping some 3,000++ elite athletes in 20 other countries.

USANA first started working with athletes in 1999 when USANA partnered with U.S. Speedskating and Speed Skating Canada. Since then, USANA has provided thousands of elite and professional athletes around the world with high-quality nutritional supplements to help them perform at their best. These groups include: the Women’s Tennis Association, the US Ski and Snowboard Association, members of the Korean Speedskating Team and National Judo Team, and more. Visit Team USANA for more information.

*The mentioned athletes are either distributors or dedicated users who have received compensation for their partnership and/or complimentary USANA products.

SAP Appoints Claus Andresen as President and Managing Director of Southeast Asia

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SAP announced the appointment of Claus Andresen as President and Managing Director of SAP Southeast Asia, promoted from Chief Operating Officer of SAP Indian Subcontinent. Andresen will report directly to Scott Russell, President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ). Building on the 28-year establishment and growth of SAP in the region, Andresen will be responsible for driving SAP Southeast Asia’s sustainable growth strategy and operations. Based in Singapore, he will oversee SAP’s business across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Indochina and other emerging markets in Southeast Asia.

“Connectivity in Southeast Asia is growing at an impressive rate and we foresee a lot more customers accelerating their digital transformation and journey to the cloud in the next few years. While the level of digital maturity in Southeast Asia varies across the region, SAP has the extensive capability to help our customers scale and succeed in this new digital economy,” said Scott Russell, President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan. “Claus brings with him the experience and vision to help our customers translate their strategy into action. I am confident that SAP Southeast Asia will continue to shine under his leadership.”

Andresen was most recently the Chief Operating Officer of SAP Indian Subcontinent, where he provided leadership to the market unit’s multi-functional sales and operations organizations, and was instrumental in making India amongst one of the fastest growing market units in SAP. Prior to that, he was responsible for Business Operations across SAP APJ, where he led a high-performing team to improve Sales and Operational Excellence. Andresen has over a decade of experience in various global and regional senior leadership roles in the Global Services & Support organization (now Digital Business Services), all with focus on helping customers run better leveraging technology.

“Southeast Asia plays an important role for SAP’s business. There are plenty of opportunities for us in this part of the world as more organisations understand the value that digital innovations can deliver to their business and how they operate. Across the region, we are seeing the trajectory and we are committed to helping our customers and partners build a solid foundation for their digital future,” said Claus Andresen, President, SAP Southeast Asia.

He continued, “SAP has more than 45 years of industry and enterprise business software experience and an unmatched global ecosystem that empowers customers to scale and thrive in this time of constant change. I am honored to lead the Southeast Asia’s business and bring innovations to our customers that unlock their potential. I look forward to working with my Southeast Asia team to take SAP to the next level in this growth region, as we help the region’s governments and businesses achieve their vision of a digitally-enabled ASEAN.”

Petya, Wanna Cry, and Mirai—Is This the New Normal?

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This past year, cybercriminals have upped the stakes once again with the high profile, global attacks of Mirai, Wannacry, and Petya, launched one after the other.

Of course, large-scale attacks aren’t new. Attacks like the ILOVEYOU worm and Code Red and Nimda were massive attacks, some of which affected exponentially more devices and organizations that this latest round of attacks. The spread of WannaCry − which reportedly hit a couple of dozen companies in the Philippines − and Petya were quickly curbed unlike these worms of the past. But this isn’t just about scale.

Unlike in years past, the new digital economy means organizations rely on data as both a critical resource and an essential source of revenue. And these new attacks are more sophisticated than ever.

Attacks like Mirai managed to hijack tens of thousands of IoT devices, such as DVRs and digital CCTV cameras using known device passwords installed by their manufacturers. These devices were then aggregated and used as a weapon to take out a massive chunk of the Internet. More recently, Mirai’s lesser known malware cousin, known as Hajime, upped the ante by adding cross-platform functionality (it currently supports five different platforms), a toolkit with automated tasks, updatable password lists, and the use of thresholds to mimic human behavior in order to stay under the radar.

Wannacry pioneered a new sort of ransomware/worm hybrid, something Fortinet calls a ransomworm, in order to use a Microsoft exploit created by the NSA and publicly released by a hacker group known as the Shadow Brokers. Rather than the usual ransomware method of selecting a specific target, Wannacry’s worm functionality allowed it to spread rapidly across the globe, attacking thousands of devices and organization. While the potential was there, the damage was quickly curbed due to an embedded kill switch.

And just this past month we saw the emergence of a new ransomworm called Petya. This new malware uses the same worm-based approach of Wannacry, even targeting the exact same vulnerability, but this time with a much more potent payload that can wipe data off a system and even modify a device’s Master Boot Record, rendering the device unusable. Since very little money was made during this attack, we can say that this attack was certainly more focused on taking machines offline than monetization through ransom. Machine availability ransom like Petya may become a much larger problem in the future when spreading through a rapid Ransomworm.

I believe that the Wannacry and Petya attacks were simply shots across the bow. They are part of an insidious new opportunistic strategy of targeting newly discovered vulnerabilities with massive, global attacks and increasingly malicious payloads. This is just being the tip of the iceberg and potentially the start of a new wave of attacks we are in for in the future in the form of Ransomworms.