[ad_1]
Amazon’s cloud computing business has acquired a U.S.-based encrypted communications platform known to government and military agencies, citing a demand for more secure messaging from home to work.
Wickr offers end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice and video calls, and file sharing. Amazon Web Services he has not disclosed it the price he paid for the business.
“Today, public sector customers use Wickr for a variety of tasks, from securely communicating with office staff to providing service members with encrypted communications on a tactical edge,” said Stephen Schmidt, head of information security at AWS.
“Business customers use Wickr to keep communications between employees and business partners private while they continue to meet regulatory requirements.”
He added that the demand for secure communications is “accelerating” as more and more people switch to so-called hybrid work, as time is divided between home and office – a change that has opened up new opportunities for hackers.
Wickr of San Francisco was founded in 2012 raised a total of $ 73 million in four rounds of funding, the last in December 2018, according to Crunchbase.
AWS continues to be a growing part of Amazon’s business, with operating revenues of $ 4.2 million in the last quarter – nearly half of the group’s total. Some of the biggest contracts come from governments around the world.
Amazon is locked to a file legal struggle More than $ 10 billion contract with Microsoft to provide cloud computing services to the U.S. Department of Defense, the so-called Jedi contract.
According to Wickr’s website, its telework services meet the safety criteria recommended by the National Security Agency for federal agencies.
The need for ultra-secure messaging from the government was highlighted at the end of last year was created that Russian spies broke into the email systems of various government agencies as part of the SolarWinds hack.
“I suspect [Amazon] you want to gain credibility in the encrypted cloud space, ”said Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher and former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. The purchase involves a specialization in cryptography for AWS, he added.
Acquisition is a growing demand for large high-tech companies to respond to requests from national governments to share customer data. Therefore, the popularity of small independent encrypted messaging services such as Nonprofit Signal is increasing.
“The question is how they balance the need to comply with law enforcement needs to provide strong end-to-end encrypted messaging products, especially at a time when we see only more aggressive attitudes from our international partners.
[ad_2]
Source link
