By: Agence France-Presse March 29, 2014 10:20 AM <\/p>\n
InterAksyon.com means BUSINESS <\/p>\n
NEW YORK - Investors are pumping millions of dollars into encryption as unease about data security drives a rising need for ways to keep unwanted eyes away from personal and corporate information. <\/p>\n
Major data breaches at Target and other retailers that have made data security a boardroom issue at companies large and small. <\/p>\n
And stunning revelations of widespread snooping by US intelligence agencies have also rattled companies and the public. <\/p>\n
For venture capital, that has opened up a new area of growth in the tech business. <\/p>\n
In February, Google Ventures led a $25.5 million round of venture funding for Atlanta-based Ionic Security, a three-year old company that works in encryption, which scrambles data before it is shipped or stored. <\/p>\n
Other encryption companies, including Toronto-based PerspecSys and San Jose, California-based CipherCloud, have announced major fundings. <\/p>\n
The funding rush could hearken a \"golden age\" of encryption, as one expert puts it. But the industry also faces barriers to a tool that until recently was not a hot commodity. <\/p>\n
Concerns about encryption range from practical challenges, such as the difficulty users have to search their encoded data, to government opposition towards encryption. <\/p>\n
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