The American giant has bought the secure messaging service from Wickr without revealing the details of the transaction.
Amazon’s cloud (cloud computing) subsidiary AWS announced on Friday the acquisition of Wickr, a secure messaging service for businesses, US federal agencies and individuals. Details of the transaction have not been specified. “The need for this kind of secure communications is accelerating,” AWS vice president Stephen Schmidt said in a statement.
“With the transition to hybrid work environments, especially due to the Covid 19 pandemic, businesses and government agencies have a growing desire to protect their communications in many remote locations,” added Stephen Schmidt.
“Military grade”
Wickr, which claims its encryption tools are “military grade,” is one of the apps that was used to leak White House information under the Trump administration, multiple media reported. By buying the company, Amazon is entering a market where other tech giants are already present, such as Facebook with WhatsApp or Apple with iMessage. Signal and Telegram are other major players in this sector.
The announcement of the acquisition of Wickr comes after the approval by a US parliamentary committee of bills aimed at breaking the monopoly of the pillars of the tech by limiting in particular the operations of repurchase of their competitors.
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