News Insights: The CIA secretly bought a company that sold encryption devices across the world. Then its spies sat back and listened.

News Insights:

Chris Clements, VP Solutions Architecture, Cerberus Sentinel: 

“A report was just released stating that US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company, Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media. The Swiss company was a top supplier of devices for encoding communications to some 120 countries from after World War II to the beginning of this century, including Iran, South American governments, and India and Pakistan.”

Kevin Bocek, VP security strategy & threat intelligence at Venafi:

“Government mandated backdoors will allow cyber criminals to undermine all types of private, secure communications and weaken the power of encryption – ultimately, if we create this power for government, it will soon work its way into the wrong hands. We have already seen this with EternalBlue and the Ukranian power station hack. This is why the Crypto AG revelations should be major concern for all of us. The only way organizations can be confident that their encryption does not possess any backdoors is by ensuring they have complete visibility and control over the encryption keys and certificates that act as machine identities. These security assets enable and secure machine to machine communications and are used in nearly every digital transaction.”