Carly Page and Ingrid Lunden report:
Amazon’s cloud services giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) is getting into the encrypted messaging business. The company has just announced that it has acquired secure communications service Wickr — a messaging app that has geared itself towards providing services to government and military groups and enterprises. It claims to be the only “collaboration service” that meets security criteria set out by the NSA.
AWS will continue operating Wickr as is, and offer its services to AWS customers, “effective immediately,” notes a blog post from Stephen Schmidt, the VP and CISO for AWS, announcing the news.
Read more on TechCrunch.
Tonya Riley of CyberScoopNews succinctly pointed out an interesting aspect to the acquisition:
The fact that Wickr is used by criminals poses an interesting challenge for Amazon and puts them squarely into the ongoing battle between tech companies and the DOJ over encrypted technology.
Lawmakers and criminals could ostensibly be using the same platform under Amazon.
— Tonya Riley (@TonyaJoRiley) June 25, 2021