Reports Monitors report on the global Cloud Encryption Technology market studies past as well as current growth trends and opportunities to gain valuable insights of the same indicators for the Cloud Encryption Technology market during the forecast period from 2019 to 2024. The report provides the overall global market statistics of the global Cloud Encryption Technology market for the period of 20192024, with 2018 as the base year and 2024 as the forecast year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the global Cloud Encryption Technology market during the forecast period.

SWOT Analysis of Leading Contenders covered in this report:- Gemalto, Sophos, Symantec, SkyHigh Networks, Netskope and more.

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The global Cloud Encryption Technology market was xx million US$ in 2018 and is expected to xx million US$ by the end of 2024, growing at a CAGR of xx% between 2019 and 2024.

This report studies the Cloud Encryption Technology market size (value and volume) by players, regions, product types and end industries, history data 2014-2018 and forecast data 2019-2024; This report also studies the global market competition landscape, market drivers and trends, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porters Five Forces Analysis.

Product Type Segmentation:-

SolutionServices

Industry Segmentation:-

BFSIHealthcare and LifesciencesMedia and EntertainmentRetail and E commerceAutomotive and ManufacturingIT and Telecom

The Cloud Encryption Technology market report includes an elaborate executive summary, along with a snapshot of the growth behavior of various segments included in the scope of the study. Furthermore, the report sheds light on changing competitive dynamics in the global Cloud Encryption Technology market. These indices serve as valuable tools for existing market players as well as for entities interested in entering the global Cloud Encryption Technology market.

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The report reaches inside into the competitive landscape of the global Cloud Encryption Technology market. Key players operating in the global Cloud Encryption Technology market have been identified, and each one of them has been profiled for their distinguishing business attributes. Company overview, financial standings, recent developments, and SWOTs are some of the attributes of players in the global Cloud Encryption Technology market that have been profiled in this report.

Regional Coverage:-

The report has been prepared after extensive primary and secondary research. Primary research involves the bulk of research efforts wherein, analysts carry out interviews with industry leaders and opinion-makers. Extensive secondary research involves referring to key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents to understand the global Cloud Encryption Technology market.

Secondary research also includes Internet sources, statistical data from government agencies, websites, and trade associations. Analysts have employed a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to study various phenomena in the global Cloud Encryption Technology market.

Key Questions Answered in Cloud Encryption Technology Market Report

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Cloud Encryption Technology Market Analysis with Key Players, Applications, Trends and Forecasts to 2025 | Gemalto, Sophos, Symantec - Nyse Nasdaq...

As a number of tech conglomerates including industry Goliaths such as Google LLC. alongside Facebook Inc., had been setting their eyes on an end-to-end encryption of their users messages and data, US congress has been set to introduce a bill over the coming weeks that would prevent the tech tycoons from offering end-to-end encryption as it looks to limit the scale of "children sexually abusive content" distributions through such platforms, at least two people familiar with the matter had unveiled late on Friday, the 21st of February 2020, on condition of anonymity as the sources were not authorized to speak publicly over the issue.

In point of fact, latest move of the US cabinet in effect would dilute impacts of a law called section 230 that had been safeguarding the tech tycoons from lawsuits related to distribution of potentially harmful contents as under the Section 230 law, certain online platforms could not be held liable for the contents posted, published delivered through their online platforms.

Concomitantly, the bill, which would be proposed by the Chair of Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham alongside a Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, would be duelling against the tech tycoons to hold them liable for the contents published and posted on their online platforms and to make them subjects to state prosecution alongside civil lawsuits, said the sources.

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US legislation to fend off end-to-end encryption of Facebook, Google and others - Financial World

What is Encryption & How Does it Work? | Security | TechworldEncryption is just one way you can prevent data theft. Techworld explains what encryption is and how it works

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The need for encryption and tough security measures is at an all-time high, with an increasing number of businesses and consumers falling victim to a whole host of cyber crimes.

Although, the method of encrypting information is certainly not new. In fact, cryptography dates back to ancient times, the only real difference being that now we use electronic devices to generate unique encryption algorithms to scramble our data.

These days you'll find encryption in most things that run using an internet connection, from messaging apps and personal banking apps to websites and online payment methods.

And for consumers, making sure your data cannot be stolen or used for ransom has never been more important.

But encryption is not without bad press. Pretty Good Encryption (PGP), a popular email encryption program has hit the headlines this week afterGerman researchers found a major vulnerability which could reveal past and present encrypted emails.

Find out more about PGP's encryption vulnerability here.

Techworld looks to explain what encryptionis and how it works.

In its most basic form, encryption is the process of encoding data, making it unintelligible and scrambled. In a lot of cases, encrypted data is also paired with an encryption key, and only those that possess the key will be able to open it.

An encryption key is a collection of algorithms designed to be totally unique. These are able to scramble and unscramble data, essentially unlocking the information and turning it back to readable data.

Usually, the person that is encrypting the data will possess the key that locks the data and will make 'copies' and pass them on to relevant people that require access. This process is calledpublic-key cryptography.

Computer or at least machine cryptography, which encryption is a form of,became significant during the second world war with military forces across Europe tasked with breaking Germany's Enigma code.

Read next:Best anti-ransomware tools 2018

Convoys travelling across the Atlantic were a vital lifeline forBritain as the majority of Europe was occupied by the Nazis.

German U-Boats often used radio signals to send encrypted messages to one another and attack these convoys en masse, planning and undertaking coordinated attacks. It was these messages that werecreated by the German Navy's Enigma machines, which the British forces set out to decrypt.

And while it's believed that Polish mathematicianMarian Rejewski actually cracked the Enigma code in 1938, not the British, at Bletchley Park in England, Alan Turing and Gordon Weichman created a code-breaking machine calledColossus based on Rejewski's which became the first programmable digital computer.

This marked a huge turning point for encryption and decryption.

In practice, when you send a message using an encrypted messaging service (WhatsApp for example), the service wraps the message in code, scrambling it and creating an encryptionkey. It can then only be unlocked by the recipient of the message.

Digital encryption is extremely complicated and that's why it is considered difficultto crack. To bolster that protection, a new set of encryption algorithms is created each time two smartphones begin communicating with one another.

You might have heard of end-to-end encryption, perhaps you've received a notification on WhatsApp saying that they now support this type of encryption.

End-to-end encryptionrefers to the process ofencoding and scrambling some information so only the sender and receiver can see it.

As previously explained, encryption keys can work as a pair, one locking the information and multiple (which can be passed out) to unlock the encrypted information.

With end-to-end encryption, however, only the sender and recipient are able to unlock and read the information. With WhatsApp, the messages are passed through a server, but it is not able to read the messages.

The diagram above shows how end-to-end encryption works, with one person sending a message to another.

There are two main methods of encryption that can be done: symmetric and asymmetric. Although, it is worth noting that within these two ways, there are various of encryptionalgorithms that are used to keep messages private.

So, while we've touched on symmetric and asymmetricencryption briefly already, you can gather more detail here.

Symmetric encryption is the process of using the same key (two keys which are identical) for both encrypting and decrypting data.

This will mean two or more parties will have access to the same key, which for some is a big drawback, even though the mathematical algorithm to protect the data is pretty much impossible to crack. People's concerns often land with the behaviours of those with access to the shared key.

Conversely,asymmetric encryption refers to the method of using a pair of keys: one for encrypting the data and the other for decrypting it.

This process is depicted in the above diagram. The first key is called the public key and the second is called the private key. The public key is shared with the servers so the message can be sent, while the private key, which is owned by the possessor of the public key, is kept a secret, totally private.

Only the person with the private key matching the public one will be able to access the data and decrypt it, making it impenetrable to intruders.

There are numerous common encryption algorithms and methods designed to keep information private. You may already be aware of some of them including RSA, Triple DES and Blowfish.

Data Masking is a form of encryption that creates a similar, yet inaccurate version of an organisations data. This data can be interpreted by the organisation, so is functional and can be used in place of the real data.

"Encryption is an essential part of an organisations security portfolio, securing data whilst it is in transit or not being used," saysJes Breslaw, director of strategy at Delphix. "However, it does not solve one of the biggest challenges when protecting sensitive data: when it is being consumed by business applications.

"Data masking is the complementary solution to encryption that solves this problem by replacing sensitive information with fictitious, yet realistic data. What makes masking attractive is that it keeps data safe and of good quality; yet, unlike encrypted data, masked data cant be reversed its one way."

The upcoming deadline for GDPR means that this form of technology is growing in use, as it not only hides direct consumer data, but also indirect data linking to an individual.

"In order to mask data, some companies create their own masking scripts, or turn to legacy vendors with bloated interfaces that require high levels of expertise," explains Breslaw.

"The reason they fail is that translating large amounts of data is a slow and costly exercise delaying projects and forcing departments to use poor quality data. Worse still, many dont protect data at all, something that GDPR will not forgive. Dynamic Data Platforms combine data masking with modern approaches to virtualising and automating the delivery and securing of data."

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What is Encryption & How Does it Work? | Security | Techworld

On December 2nd, 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire on the city of San Bernardino, California, leaving 14 people, and the two shooters, dead. During the investigation the FBI obtained Farook's iPhone, but could not access it through the passcode. They went Apple to unlock it, and Apple couldn't help.

The iPhone's encryption methods were so secure, according to Apple, that Apple itself couldn't access the data on the phone. As a result, the U.S. government wanted Apple to purposefully weaken the encryption of its iPhones, putting a "backdoor" in the iOS framework that would allow the FBI to access the contents of iPhones everywhere. But this would also leave the operating system much more vulnerable to hackers and other governments.

The battle over online privacy has been waging on since the popularization of the internet itself. These discussions with Apple in particular have brought privacy activists and law enforcement head to head, fighting over who can utilize the privacy provided by encryption and what they can use that encryption for.

Messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp and iMessage are encrypted. That means the messages are kept private from everyone except the intended recipient. And while these platforms are far from perfect Jeff Bezos' phone was recently accessed through a malicious video message via WhatsApp many people rely on the privacy encryption provides daily.

Esra'a Al Shafei, for example, built a social platform called Ahwaa where individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ can virtually meet and talk with each other in Middle Eastern and North African countries such as Egypt, where homosexuality is not expressly illegal, but where the government has used laws against what they call debauchery, among others, to criminalize LGBTQ+ individuals.

Ahwaa is an online platform for individuals in the Middle East and North Africa who identify as LGBTQ+

Ahwaa.org

Al Shafei says that, if encryption were to be forcibly weakened, she would have to shut down the platform. She said, "the Internet as a whole will lose so many voices, so many communities, so many narratives, so many perspectives."

Michael Daniel, President and CEO of Cyber Threat Alliance and former Cybersecurity Coordinator on the National Security Council Staff under Barack Obama, says that "there are situations where we would want the government to be able to get access to certain information." For Michael, it's important to make a distinction between information that should remain encrypted, like bank data and health data, and information that might be beneficial to make available to law enforcement, like text message.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation disagrees. "I don't think it's appropriate for the government to decide that they get security and we don't," says Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Amnesty International agreed with this sentiment in an open letter to Facebook, urging the company to stay strong on its decision to implement end-to-end encryption on its messaging platforms, saying "there is no middle ground: if law enforcement is allowed to circumvent encryption, then anybody can."

The debate continues, and is likely to continue, until a compromise can be made. Whether that will ever happen has yet to be seen.

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Why the US government is questioning WhatsApp's encryption - CNBC

from the what-are-you-so-afraid-of dept

The Russian government continues to escalate its war on encrypted services and VPNs. For years now, Putin's government has slowly but surely taken steps to effectively outlaw secure communications, framing the restrictions as essential for national security, with the real goal of making it harder than ever for Russian citizens to dodge the Putin government's ever-expanding surveillance ambitions.

The latest case in point: starting last Friday, the Russian government banned access to encrypted email service Tutanota, without bothering to provide the company with much of any meaningful explanation:

In a blog post, the company notes that Tutanota has been blocked in Egypt since October of last year, and that impacted users should attempt to access the service via a VPN or the Tor browser:

"Encrypted communication is a thorn in the side to authoritarian governments like Russia as encryption makes it impossible for security services to eavesdrop on their citizens. The current blocking of Tutanota is an act against encryption and confidential communication in Russia.

...We condemn the blocking of Tutanota. It is a form of censorship of Russian citizens who are now deprived of yet another secure communication channel online. At Tutanota we fight for our users right to privacy online, also, and particularly, in authoritarian countries such as Russia and Egypt.

Except VPNs have been under fire in Russia for years as well. Back in 2016 Russia introduced a new surveillance bill promising to deliver greater security to the country. Of course, as with so many similar efforts around the world the bill actually did the exact opposite -- not only mandating new encryption backdoors, but also imposing harsh new data-retention requirements on ISPs and VPN providers forced to now register with the government. As a result, some VPN providers, like Private Internet Access, wound up leaving the country after finding their entire function eroded and having some of their servers seized.

Last year Russia upped the ante, demanding that VPN providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IPVanish, and HideMyAss help block forbidden websites that have been added to Russia's censorship watchlist. And last January, ProtonMail (and ProtonVPN) got caught up in the ban as well after it refused to play the Russian government's registration games. While Russian leaders want the public to believe these efforts are necessary to ensure national security, they're little more than a giant neon sign advertising Russian leaders' immense fear of the Russian public being able to communicate securely.

Filed Under: encryption, russiaCompanies: tutanota

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Russia's War On Encryption Stumbles Forth With Ban Of Tutanota - Techdirt

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You might have heard the term encryption backdoor in the news recently. Well explain what it is, why its one of the most hotly contested topics in the tech world, and how it could affect the devices you use every day.

Most of the systems consumers use today have some form of encryption. To get past it, you have to provide some kind of authentication. For example, if yourphone is locked, you have to use a password, your fingerprint, or facial recognition to access your apps and data.

These systems generally do an excellent job of protecting your personal data. Even if someone takes your phone, he cant gain access to your information unless he figures out your passcode. Plus, most phones can wipe their storage or become unusable for a time if someone tries to force them to unlock.

A backdoor is a built-in way of circumventing that type of encryption. It essentially allows a manufacturer to access all the data on any device it creates. Andits nothing newthis reaches all the way back to the abandoned Clipper chip in the early 90s.

Many things can serve as a backdoor. It can be a hidden aspect of the operating system, an external tool that acts as a key for every device, or a piece of code that creates a vulnerability in the software.

RELATED: What Is Encryption, and How Does It Work?

In 2015, encryption backdoors became the subject of a heated global debate when Apple and the FBI wereembroiled in a legal battle. Through a series of court orders, the FBI compelled Apple to crack an iPhone that belonged to a deceased terrorist. Apple refused to create the necessary software and a hearing was scheduled. However, the FBI tapped a third-party (GrayKey), which used a security hole to bypass the encryption and the case was dropped.

The debate has continued among technology firms and in the public sector. When the case first made headlines, nearly every major technology company in the U.S. (including Google, Facebook, and Amazon) supported Apples decision.

Most tech giants dont want the government to compel them to create an encryption backdoor. They argue that a backdoor makes devices and systems significantly less secure because youre designing the system with a vulnerability.

While only the manufacturer and the government would know how to access the backdoor at first, hackers and malicious actors would eventually discover it. Soon after, exploits would become available to many people. And if the U.S. government gets the backdoor method, would the governments of other countries get it, too?

This creates some frightening possibilities. Systems with backdoors would likely increase the number and scale of cybercrimes, from targeting state-owned devices and networks to creating a black market for illegal exploits. As Bruce Schneier wrote in The New York Times,it also potentially opens up critical infrastructure systems that manage major public utilities to foreign and domestic threats.

Of course, it also comes at the cost of privacy. An encryption backdoor in the hands of the government allows them to look at any citizens personal data at any time without their consent.

Government and law enforcement agencies that want an encryption backdoor argue that the data shouldnt be inaccessible to law enforcement and security agencies. Some murder and theft investigations have stalled because law enforcement was unable to access locked phones.

The information stored in a smartphone, like calendars, contacts, messages, and call logs, are all things a police department might have the legal right to search with a warrant. The FBI said it faces a Going Dark challenge as more data and devices become inaccessible.

Whether companies should create a backdoor in their systems remains a significant policy debate. Lawmakers and public officials frequently point out that what they really want is a front door that allows them to request decryption under specific circumstances.

However, a front door and encryption backdoor are largely the same. Both still involve creating an exploit to grant access to a device.

Until an official decision is rendered, this issue will likely continue to pop up in the headlines.

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What Is an Encryption Backdoor? - How-To Geek

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. legislation will be introduced in the coming weeks that could hurt technology companies ability to offer end-to-end encryption, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, and it aims to curb the distribution of child sexual abuse material on such platforms.

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: An encryption message is seen on the WhatsApp application on an iPhone, March 27, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble

The bill, proposed by the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, aims to fight such material on platforms like Facebook (FB.O) and Alphabets Googles (GOOGL.O) by making them liable for state prosecution and civil lawsuits. It does so by threatening a key immunity the companies have under federal law called Section 230.

This law shields certain online platforms from being treated as the publisher or speaker of information they publish, and largely protects them from liability involving content posted by users.

The bill, titled The Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2019, or the EARN IT Act, threatens this key immunity unless companies comply with a set of best practices, which will be determined by a 15-member commission led by the Attorney General.

The move is the latest example of how regulators and lawmakers in Washington are reconsidering the need for incentives that once helped online companies grow, but are increasingly viewed as impediments to curbing online crime, hate speech and extremism.

The sources said the U.S. tech industry fears these best practices will be used to condemn end-to-end encryption - a technology for privacy and security that scrambles messages so that they can be deciphered only by the sender and intended recipient. Federal law enforcement agencies have complained that such encryption hinders their investigations.

Online platforms are exempted from letting law enforcement access their encrypted networks. The proposed legislation provides a workaround to bypass that, the sources said.

This a deeply dangerous and flawed piece of legislation that will put every Americans security at risk... it is deeply irresponsible to try to undermine security for online communications, said Jesse Blumenthal, who leads technology and innovation at Stand Together, also known as the Koch network -funded by billionaire Charles Koch. The group sides with tech companies that have come under fire from lawmakers and regulators in Washington.

There is no such thing as a back door just for good guys that does not create a front door for bad guys, Blumenthal said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr questioned whether Facebook, Google and other major online platforms still need the immunity from legal liability that has prevented them from being sued over material their users post.

During a Senate Judiciary hearing on encryption in December, a bipartisan group of senators warned tech companies that they must design their products encryption to comply with court orders. Senator Graham issued a warning to Facebook and Apple: This time next year, if we havent found a way that you can live with, we will impose our will on you.

A spokeswoman for Senator Graham said on timing, other details, we dont have anything more to add right now. She pointed Reuters to recent comments by the senator saying the legislation is not ready but getting close.

A spokeswoman for Senator Blumenthal said he was encouraged by the progress made by the bill.

A discussion draft of the EARN IT Act has been doing the rounds and has been criticized by technology companies.

Facebook and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum

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Encryption on Facebook, Google, others threatened by planned new bill - Reuters

The Department of Justice has joined the campaign against Section 230, the federal law that enables the internet as we know it. Its effort is probably part of Washington's ongoing battle against encrypted communications. And legacy news media companies are apparently all to happy to help them in this fight.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice held a "public workshop" on Section 230. Predictably, it wound being up a greatest hits of the half-truths and paranoid bellyaching commonly employed against this important law.

Section 230 prevents digital companies from being automatically treated as the speaker of any third-party speech they assist in putting online. It also allows companies to moderate content without becoming liable for it. The law was passed in 1996 to address the fact that the then-dominant web companies felt forced to choose between very strictly gate-keeping or allowing a free-for-all if they wanted to avoid civil lawsuits and criminal liability over user-generated speech.

Section 230 has never prevented the Justice Department from enforcing federal criminal statutes against online violators, as many have misleadingly argued. (For a quick debunking of more Section 230 myths, see this video.) It acts as a shield against civil lawsuits and against state and local criminal charges.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr opened the event yesterday by saying that "criminals and bad actors now use technology to facilitate and expand the scope of their wrongdoing and the victimization of our fellow citizens."

This is the same line of talk Barr has used against encrypted communication.

Barr invoked child exploitation as one reason to reexamine Section 230. But the statute was passed explicitly to address this issue, as part of a larger law concerning "communication decency" and online pornography. It provides the legal framework that allows companies to actually try to keep exploitative content offline. And nothing in Section 230 prevents the enforcement of federal laws against child pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation.

"Section 230 has never prevented federal criminal prosecution of those who traffic in [child sexual abuse material]as more than 36,000 individuals were between 2004 and 2017," points out Berin Szoka in a post dissecting draft antiSection 230 legislation proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (RS.C.). Graham's bill would amend Section 230 to lower the standard for legal liability, so tech companies needn't "knowingly" aid in the transmission of illegal content to be found guilty in civil suits and state criminal prosecutions; they'd merely have to be deemed to have acted "recklessly" in such matters as content moderation or product design. The legislation would also create a presidential commission to offer "best practices" on this front. Taken together, Szoka sees this as a back door to banning end-to-end encryption by declaring it reckless. (More on that bill from First Amendment lawyer Eric Goldman here.)

Barr's remarks yesterday didn't explicitly mention giving government backdoors to spy on people. Instead, he played up several popular (and wrong) arguments against Section 230, such as the claim that it's responsible for "big tech" restricting online speech or that it prevents us from having "safer online spaces." Lurking in these comments is the schizophrenic proposition girding a lot of Section 230 opposition: that getting rid of it would somehow permit freer speech online and keep online spaces "safer" and more palatable for everyone.

Barr also engaged in the kind of social media exceptionalism common among Section 230 critics, insisting that online platforms today are so radically different than their predecessors as to warrant different rules. In doing so, he suggested that walled-off internet services like AOL had less control over content than their current counterparts and implied that Section 230 only protects social platforms and "big tech" companies.

In reality, Section 230 applies to even the smallest companies and groups (and is more important for ensuring their existence than it is for big companies, whose army of lawyers and moderators have a better chance of weathering a post-230 onslaught of lawsuits from users). And it applies to many types of digital entities, including behind-the-scenes web architecture (such as blogging platforms and email newsletter software), consumer review websites, crowdfunding apps, podcast networks, independent message-boards, dating platforms, digital marketing tools, email providers, and many more.

Barr said Wednesday that the Justice Department was "not here to advocate for a position." Yet everything else in his speech suggested otherwise, including his waxing about how civil lawsuits against tech companies (of the sort disallowed by Section 230) could "work hand-in-hand with the department's law enforcement efforts."

He concluded the talk by saying "we must remember that the goal of firms is to maximize profit, while the mission of government is to protect American citizens and society."

So: tech companies bad, government good. Got that?

Not everyone in Washington buys this simplistic argument, thank goodness. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Sen. Ron Wyden (DOre.), who co-authored Section 230, explains how the law protects individual speech rights and pointed out that major media and tech companies have in fact been working with regulators against the law.

"Occasionally," writes Wyden, "Congress actually passes a law that protects the less powerful elements of our society, the insurgents and the disrupters. That's what it did in 1996 when it passed [Section 230]." He explains that the law "was written to provide legal protection to online platforms so they could take down objectionable material without being dragged into court."

"Without 230, social media couldn't exist," adds Wyden. Neither could movements like Black Lives Matter or #MeToo. "Whenever laws are passed to put the government in control of speech, the people who get hurt are the least powerful in society."

People often pretend government regulation of speech is somehow neutral. But defining permissible speech can change greatly depending on subjective and partisan priorities. Without Section 230, what online content is permissible and who gets punished would be determined not by an array of private companies but by a centralized political institution with the power to imprison, not just deplatform.

"I'm certain this administration would use power to regulate speech to punish its enemies and protect its allies," writes Wyden at the Post. "It would threaten Facebook or YouTube for taking down white supremacist content. It would label Black Lives Matter activists as purveyors of hate."

A Democratic administration would approve and disfavor different sorts of speech. But we would still have a partisan and centralized command over the bounds of online communication. And either way, the spoils will go to the big tech companies that are best able to lobby, contribute, curry favor, or otherwise game the system.

Powerful entities like Facebook, Disney, and IBM are all fighting to re-write the rules for digital speech in their favor. A recent New York Times article detailed how the fight against 230 is being led by a coalition of old media companies resentful of Google, Facebook, etc. and other corporations whose business has been bit into by digital tools. For instance, Marriott has been campaigning against Section 230 as a way to stick it to vacation rental platforms like Airbnb.

"The easiest lever to hurt tech companies that a lot of people see is 230," Stanford Law School professor Daphne Keller told the Times.

Mike Masnick suggests this illustrates the "concept of political entrepreneurs v. market entrepreneurs. One of them builds better, more innovative products that increase consumer welfare and increase the overall size of the pie by making things people want. The other uses its enormous power and political connections to pass regulations that hinder competitors who have innovated."

The companies now opposing Section 230 are "the legacy companies which have fallen behind, which have not adapted, and which are using their political will to try to suppress and destroy the open systems that the rest of us now depend on," Masnick writes.

One such example from this week is the News Media Alliance, formerly known as the Newspaper Association of America, which "represents approximately 2,000 news organizations across the United States and Europe." At the Justice Department's Wednesday workshop, the group's president, David Chavern, testified that "Section 230 has created a deeply distorted variable liability marketplace for media." This, he said, is bad not just "for news publishing but for the health of our society."

Chavern insisted this wasn't merely about news industry profits. But he ended his testimony by endorsing a "Journalism Competition & Preservation Act," which he said "would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate with the platforms and return value back to professional journalism," whichsure makes it sound like this is about news industry profits.

And when entrenched industry profits line up with the feds' surveillance agenda? That's when we're invited to kiss the open internet goodbye.

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Newspaper Lobbyists and Encryption Foes Join the Chorus Against Section 230 - Reason

Hello, and welcome back to Last Week In Venture, the weekly rundown of deals that may have flown under your radar.

There are plenty of companies operating outside the unicorn and public company spotlight, but that doesnt mean their stories arent worth sharing. They offer a peek around the corner at whats coming next, and what investors today are placing bets on.

Without further ado, lets check out a few rounds from the week that was in venture land.

I dont know how youre reading this, but you are. Most of us read with our eyes, but some read with their ears or their fingers. Blind people frequently have options when it comes to reading, but theres more to life than just reading.

Imagine going to a grocery store and stepping up to the bakery counter. You might be able to read a label with your eyes, but if theres no label you could still probably figure out what type bread youre buying based on its color and shape. But what if you couldnt see (or see well)? What are you going to do, touch all the bread to figure out its size and shape? Get real down low and smell em all? (Which, for the record, sounds lovely, if a little unhygienic.)

Youd probably ask someone who can see for some help. Thats the kind of interaction a service like Be My Eyes facilitates. Headquartered in San Francisco, the startup founded in 2014 connects blind people and people with low vision to sighted volunteers over on-demand remote video calls facilitated through the companys mobile applications for Android and iOS. The sighted person can see whats going on, and offer real time support for the person who cant see.

The company announced this week that it raised $2.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Cultivation Capital. In 2018, Be My Eyes launched a feature called Specialized Help, which connects blind and low-vision people to service representatives at companies. Microsoft, Google, Lloyds Banking Group and Procter & Gamble are among the companies enrolled in the program.

Be My Eyes initially launched as an all-volunteer effort. The company says it has a community of more than 3.5 million sighted volunteers helping almost 200,000 visually impaired people worldwide. According to Crunchbase data, the company has raised over $5.3 million in combined equity and grant funding.

The environment is, like, super important. Its the air we breathe and the water we drink. Regardless of your opinion on environmental regulations, most come from a good place: Ensuring the long-term sustainability of life on a planet with finite resources by putting a check on destructive activity. Where theres regulation, theres a need to comply with it, and compliance can be kind of a drag. There is a lot of paperwork to do.

Wildnote is a company based in San Luis Obispo, California. Its in the business of environmental data collection, management and reporting using its eponymous mobile application and web platform. Field researchers and compliance professionals can capture and record information (including photos) on-site using either standard reporting forms or their own custom workflows. The companys data platform also features export capabilities, which produce PDFs or raw datasets in multiple formats.

The company announced $1.35 million in seed funding from Entrada Ventures and HG Ventures, the corporate venture arm of The Heritage Group. Wildnote was part of the 2019 cohort of The Heritage Groups accelerator program, produced in collaboration with Techstars, which aimed to assist startups working on problems from legacy industries like infrastructure, materials and environmental services.

Encryption uses math to transform information humans and machines can read and understand into information that we cant. Encrypted data can be decrypted by those in possession of a cryptographic key. To everyone else, encrypted data is just textual gobbledegook.

The thing is, to computers, encrypted data is also textual gobbledegook. Computer scientists and cryptographers have long been looking for a way to work with encrypted data without needing to decrypt it in the process. Homomorphic encryption has been a subject of academic research and corporate research and development labs for years, but it appears a commercial homomorphic encryption product has hit the market, and the company behind it is raising money to grow.

The company were talking about here is Enveil. Headquartered in Fulton, Maryland, the company makes software it calls ZeroReveal. Its ZeroReveal Search product allows customers to encrypt and store data while also enabling users to perform searches directly against ciphertext data, meaning that data stays secure. Its ZeroReveal Compute Fabric offers client- and server-side applications which let enterprises securely operate on encrypted data stored on premises, in a large commercial cloud computing platform, or obtained from third parties.

Enveil raised $10 million in its Series A round, which was led by C5 Capital. Participating investors include 1843 Capital, Capital One Growth Ventures, MasterCard and Bloomberg Beta. The company was founded in 2014 by Ellison Anne Williams and has raised a total of $15 million; prior investors include cybersecurity incubator DataTribe and In-Q-Tel, the nonprofit venture investment arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Image Credits: Last Week In Venture graphic created byJD Battles. Photo by Daniil Kuzelev, via Unsplash.

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Last Week In Venture: Eyes As A Service, Environmental Notes And Homomorphic Encryption - Crunchbase News

Sophos has debuted a new version of its XG Firewall that provides visibility into previously unobservable transport mechanisms while retaining high levels of performance.

The Oxford, U.K.-based platform security vendor will make it more difficult for adversaries to hide information in different protocols by inspecting all encrypted traffic with the XG Firewall 18, according to Chief Product Officer Dan Schiappa. Adversaries are turning to encryption in their exploits, with 23 percent of malware families using encrypted communication for command and control or installation.

Weve kind of turned the light on in a kitchen full of roaches, Schiappa told CRN.

[Related: 10 Things To Know About The Planned $3.82 Billion Thoma Bravo-Sophos Deal]

Pricing for the Sophos XG Firewall starts at $359 per year and scales based on term length and model, according to the company. The performance of the XG Firewall has been vastly improved by better determining which applications and traffic should go through the companys deep packet inspection engine, according to Schiappa.

By leveraging SophosLabs intelligence, the company is able to rapidly push safe or known traffic through while quarantining only the unknown or unsafe traffic for deep packet inspection, he said. The XG Firewall will also be easier to manage in Sophos Central with better alert engines and reporting capabilities, according to Schiappa.

Sophos Central now has full firewall management capabilities, meaning that customers can apply policies universally across multiple firewalls from the central dashboard and granularly adjust settings for a specific firewall from the same location. In addition, synchronized app control has strengthened the sharing of information between the endpoint and the firewall, Schiappa said.

The company has been working on the XG Firewall 18 for more than two years, he said, and considers it to be the most transformative version of the XG thanks to the new Xstream architecture.

We really wanted to build the firewall without any historical backdrop, Schiappa said. Well have the most next-gen and recent firmware OS on the market, and that was something that was important to us.

The improvements Sophos has made around security and performance combined with the vast gains in its natural rules engine will make the XG Firewall much more credible to enterprises, according to Schiappa. Adding enterprise management functionality also will help Sophos attract larger customers at a much higher rate than in the past, Schiappa said.

We now have an enterprise-credible firewall, but were never going to abandon our sweet spot in the SMB and midmarket, he said.

Existing Sophos customers will get the XG Firewall 18 as part of the normal upgrade process without any type of new license required, according to Schiappa. Customers will be notified when the Xstream architecture is available for their model of firewall.

The growth of Sophos Central and embrace of synchronized security have dramatically increased the number of Sophos products being used by the average customer, according to Schiappa. Although the XG Firewall 18 is a great stand-alone product, it also represents a golden opportunity for channel partners to expand their footprint with endpoint-focused customers into the network.

This was a big effort, and I think its going to be worth it, he said.

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Sophos Takes On Encrypted Network Traffic With New XG Firewall 18 - CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers