Stefan Mileschin

The recent leaks which indicate that the NSA has adopted a "spy on everyone" policy has created a new business opportunity for companies who do not want their data in the hands of the US or its allies.

Lockbox, a tech startup founded in 2008, just received $2.5 million in seed funding for its end-to-end encryption cloud service, Client Portal.

This shows how much interest there is out there in keeping spy agencies out of the cloud. Lockbox encrypts and compresses files before they are uploaded to the cloud. Only a person in possession of the corresponding key can unlock, or decrypt, the files.

This makes it hard for the NSA, hackers, or business competitors to look at sensitive and private files.

It is not a covert company either. It already has sold its services to NASA and Coca-Cola.

Lockbox's Client Portal lives on Amazon's S3 servers. The encryption is fairly strong - Lockbox developed the encryption libraries that Google uses in Android.

The technology threatens to make life harder for the Prism dragnet, which will be unable to sniff out any code words at all - effectively creating an encrypted darkweb which Prism may not be able to see.

However, the Snowden files revealed NSA infrastructure from several years ago, so it is unknown how effective such methods would be today.

Lockbox CEO Peter Long said in a press release that businesses that have stayed away from the cloud in the past are excited by the global opportunities the company has opened.

He said that over the next few months his outfit will be signing new partners, customers, and expanding the business.

It is about to unveil its iOS apps, which will allow users to securely view encrypted files on iPhones and iPads.

The program is not cheap and will cost $500 per year. Users can share the service with 20 other people.


http://news.techeye.net/security/spy...-hit-the-shops