Amazon’s cloud business acquires Sqrrl, a security start-up with NSA roots
Amazon’s cloud business has recently stepped up its efforts to pick up business from U.S. intelligence agencies
By Jordan Novet
Amazon’s cloud business has acquired Sqrrl, a cybersecurity start-up that spun out of the National Security Agency.
The deal, which Sqrrl confirmed on Tuesday, comes as Amazon Web Services aims to pick up more business from U.S. intelligence agencies. In November AWS announced the formation of a “secret” region of data centres meant to handle computing and data storage jobs from those clients.
“We will be joining the Amazon Web Services family, and we’re looking forward to working together on customer offerings for the future,” Sqrrl said in a message posted to its homepage. Axios reported in December that Amazon was in advanced talks to buy Sqrrl and said the deal could be worth more than US$40 million. Terms weren’t disclosed.
AWS leads the public cloud market, with US$1.17 billion in operating income and US$4.58 billion in revenue in the third quarter. Competitors include Google and Microsoft.
AWS has sought to enhance its cloud in the past year with security tools. In August AWS announced Amazon Macie , based on technology from a start-up it had acquired called Harvest.ai.