Encrypted Communication Firm Wickr Joins AWS Team

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has purchased encrypted communication technology company Wickr, according to a Friday (June 25) announcement from AWS Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Stephen Schmidt.

Clients and partners can access advanced security features with Wickr throughout voice and video calling, messaging, file sharing and collaboration that traditional communications services don’t offer. As a result, large firms and government agencies can put governance and security controls into place to help satisfy compliance mandates, according to the announcement.

“With the move to hybrid work environments, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises and government agencies have a growing desire to protect their communications across many remote locations. Wickr’s secure communications solutions help enterprises and government organizations adapt to this change in their workforces and is a welcome addition to the growing set of collaboration and productivity services that AWS offers customers and partners,” Schmidt wrote in the announcement.

Public sector clients currently harness Wickr for a broad array of use cases from equipping “service members at the tactical edge with encrypted communications” to safely communicating with staffers based in offices, according to Schmidt.

Schmidt said AWS is providing Wickr offerings “effective immediately,” while “Wickr customers, channel, and business partners can continue to use Wickr’s services as they do today.”

The news comes as AWS made Adam Selipsky its CEO. The executive “brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation, and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team,” according to an email Amazon AWS CEO Andy Jassy sent to AWS staffers, which was posted online.

“Adam is not a new face to AWS. Back in 2005, Adam was one of the first VPs we hired in AWS, and ran AWS’s Sales, Marketing, and Support for 11 years (as well as some other areas like our AWS Platform services for a spell),” Jassy said in the post.

PYMNTS previously reported that Jeff Bezos is stepping away from Amazon and will be handing off CEO responsibilities to Jassy and moving into the executive chairman position beginning in Q3 of 2021.