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Amazon’s cloud computing business has acquired an encrypted communications platform in the United States, popular with government and military agencies, citing the demand for more secure messaging in the work-from-home era.
Wickr offers end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice and video calling, and file sharing. Amazon Web Services did not reveal the price he paid for the business.
“Today, public sector customers use Wickr for a wide range of missions, from communicating securely with office employees to providing tactical service members with encrypted communications,” said Stephen Schmidt, head of information security at AWS.
“Business customers use Wickr to keep communications between employees and business partners private, even though they meet regulatory requirements.”
He added that the demand for secure communications is “accelerating” as people move more and more towards so-called hybrid work, with a time split between home and office, a change that has open new opportunities for hackers.
Founded in 2012, it has San Francisco-based Wickr get up 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 income of $ 4.2 million in the last quarter, nearly half of the group’s total. Some of his most important contracts come from governments around the world.
Amazon is locked in a file legal battle with Microsoft for a $ 10 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the U.S. Department of Defense, the so-called Jedi contract.
According to the Wickr website, its telecommuting services meet the safety criteria recommended by the National Security Agency for federal agencies.
The need for ultra-secure government messages became apparent late last year when arose that Russian spies had entered the email systems of various government agencies as part of the SolarWinds hack.
“I suspect [Amazon] I want to gain credibility in encrypted cloud space, ”said Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher and former chief technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. The acquisition brings cryptography experience to AWS, he added.
The acquisition comes at a time of growing complaint that large technology companies are leaning on requests from national governments to share customer data, leading to an increase in the popularity of smaller independent encrypted messaging services. such as Nonprofit Signal.
“The question is how do they balance the need to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging products with the need to meet law enforcement needs, especially at a time when we see more aggressive stances not just from our own partners international, but our own Department of Justice, ”Soltani said.
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