FBI

• security
• GV (Google Ventures)
• investment
• FBI
• Google Capital

Google Capital leads $100M investment to fund growth by Crowdstrike cybersecurity company

Ben Lovejoy Jul 13 2015 - 6:16 am PT

0 Comments

Google Capital has led a $100M investment in Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company with strong government ties, reports the WSJ. Supporting investors include Rackspace, Accel and Warburg Pincus.

Its head of investigations, Shawn Henry, is the former top computer-crimes official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crowdstrike’s D.C.-based chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, has a long history of calling out foreign hacker groups.

Crowdstrike offers a remote monitoring service for its clients’ networks, aiming to detect hacking attempts at an early stage. Where hackers have already penetrated, the company works to identify the group responsible.

Google Capital was formed last year to provide funding for successful companies looking for growth. It sits alongside Google Ventures, which provides early-stage funding for startups. Google Capital partner Gene Frantz said that they were “blown away” by the company tripling its billings year-on-year.

“We were blown away by CrowdStrike’s incredible growth and impressive customer adoption,” said Gene Frantz, partner at Google Capital. “They have a truly unique SaaS-based endpoint security model, a highly scalable subscription revenue model, and a visionary technical approach that has huge potential to transform the industry, which is why we’re thrilled to make this investment.”

• Google
• security
• privacy
• Apple Inc.
• Encryption

Google among those asking Obama to reject calls for government access to encrypted data

Ben Lovejoy May 19 2015 - 4:11 am PT

0 Comments

Google and Apple have co-signed a letter calling on President Obama to reject any government proposal to allow the government backdoor access to encrypted data on smartphones and other devices. The Washington Post says the letter, due to be delivered today, is signed by more than 140 tech companies, prominent technologists and civil society groups.

The signatories urge Obama to follow the group’s unanimous recommendation that the government should “fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards” and not “in any way subvert, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable” commercial software.

The FBI has been pushing increasingly hard to require tech companies to build in backdoor access to their encryption systems to allow access by law enforcement, even going so far as to say that Apple could be responsible for the death of a child. a NY District Attorney has also cited public safety as justification for demanding access to encrypted data.

The letter calling on Obama to reject this argument is also signed by five members of a presidential review group appointed by Obama in 2013 to assess technology policies in the wake of leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Many in the tech industry have pointed out that, aside from the obvious concerns over government intrusion into the private lives of its citizens, any backdoor used by the government could potentially be discovered and exploited by hackers and foreign governments.