That’s where Codified, an early stage startup that was nurtured last year inside venture capital firm Madrona Ventures, comes into the picture.
The company was built from the ground up from a data veteran with an eye toward solving the data compliance problem, and today it announced a $4 million seed round.
Company founder and CEO Yatharth Gupta sees that data is at the center of today’s technology, yet companies struggle to control access to it.
Both jobs, he says, were heavily involved in data and he saw the kinds of problems he’s trying to solve with Codified.
Investors in today’s round include Vine Ventures, Soma Capital and Madrona Venture Labs where Codified incubated last year.
It also includes a commitment to let customers change cloud providers, or services within the cloud, if they choose to.
It also details a focus on building cybersecurity around AI services; attention to building data centers and other infrastructure in an environmentally-sound way; and education investments.
Brad Smith, the president and vice chair of Microsoft, announced the framework today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The announcement comes at the same time that Microsoft is coming under increasing regulatory scrutiny for its $13 billion investment in OpenAI, which currently gives it a 49% stake in the startup that is leading the charge for generative AI services globally.
In January, the European competition watchdog said that it was assessing whether the investment falls under antitrust rules.
Security researchers say a pair of easy-to-exploit flaws in a popular remote access tool used by more than a million companies around the world are now being mass-exploited, with hackers abusing the vulnerabilities to deploy ransomware and steal sensitive data.
ConnectWise first disclosed the flaws on February 19 and urged on-premise customers to install security patches immediately.
Finnish cybersecurity firm WithSecure said in a blog post Monday that its researchers have also observed “en-mass exploitation” of the ScreenConnect flaws from multiple threat actors.
It’s not yet known how many ConnectWise ScreenConnect customers or end users are affected by these vulnerabilities, and ConnectWise spokespeople did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions.
The company’s website claims that the organization provides its remote access technology to more than a million small to medium-sized businesses that manage over 13 million devices.
Some cryptocurrency exchanges in Nigeria faced accessibility issues for users, prompting speculation of imposed restrictions on crypto sites, the Financial Times reported.
On Wednesday, local media reported that Nigeria’s telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), received instructions from the country’s apex bank to suspend access to crypto websites, including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
According to Bloomberg, a presidential spokesman confirmed Nigeria’s issuance of a directive instructing telecoms and internet service providers to block access to cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Only users attempting to access the website are impacted, although the app is currently available,” Binance stated.
While several Binance users in Nigeria reported difficulties accessing the site in the early hours of Thursday, it appears that the directive to restrict access has been temporarily halted, as these cryptocurrency trading platforms, including Kraken and Coinbase, are currently accessible.
Samsung is bringing its Galaxy AI features to more devices through a new One UL 6.1 update coming in late March, the company announced today.
The features are coming to the Galaxy S23 series, S23 FE, Z Fold5 and Z Flip5, as well as Tab S9 Ultra, Tab S9+ and Tab S9.
The AI features were first introduced for the Galaxy S24 series, but will soon be available to even more Samsung users.
As nearly every tech company is introducing and expanding their AI-powered features, it makes sense for Samsung to make its features more widely accessible.
In addition, a new “Note Assist” feature will let users generate summaries and translate notes, while a “Browsing Assist” feature will provide them with quick summaries of news articles.
Researchers warn high-risk ConnectWise flaw under attack is ’embarrassingly easy’ to exploit “I can’t sugarcoat it — this shit is bad," said Huntress' CEOSecurity experts are warning that a high-risk vulnerability in a widely used remote access tool is “trivial and embarrassingly easy” to exploit, as the software’s developer confirms malicious hackers are actively exploiting the flaw.
The maximum severity-rated vulnerability affects ConnectWise ScreenConnect (formerly ConnectWise Control), a popular remote access software that allows managed IT providers and technicians to provide real-time remote technical support on customer systems.
Cybersecurity company Huntress on Wednesday published an analysis of the actively exploited ConnectWise vulnerability.
ConnectWise also released a fix for a separate vulnerability affecting its remote desktop software.
The U.S. agencies also observed hackers abusing remote access software from AnyDesk, which was earlier this month forced to reset passwords and revoke certificates after finding evidence of compromised production systems.
1Password, the AgileBits-owned password management software developer, today announced that it has acquired Kolide, an endpoint security platform, for an undisclosed amount.
According to 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner, Kolide founder and CEO Jason Meller and all of Kolide’s 30 employees will join 1Password “as an intact team.” Meller has taken on the role of VP of product at 1Password.
Kolide’s platform, which Meller co-launched in 2016 with Mike Arpaia and Zach Wasserman, offers security-related endpoint alerts, remediation and more delivered via Slack.
Kolide attempts to prevent unknown endpoint devices from accessing corporate apps.
Prior to the acquisition, Kolide managed to pull in $26.6 million in venture capital from OpenView, Matrix and other VCs and angels.
Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave “unrestricted access” to the company’s source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it.
The London-based cybersecurity company said it discovered a Mercedes employee’s authentication token in a public GitHub repository during a routine internet scan in January.
According to Mittal, this token — an alternative to using a password for authenticating to GitHub — could grant anyone full access to Mercedes’s GitHub Enterprise Server, thus allowing the download of the company’s private source code repositories.
“The GitHub token gave ‘unrestricted’ and ‘unmonitored’ access to the entire source code hosted at the internal GitHub Enterprise Server,” Mittal explained in a report shared by TechCrunch.
It’s not known if anyone else besides Mittal discovered the exposed key, which was published in late-September 2023.
Update: Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia offered TechCrunch the following statement,Today, Amazon Ring has announced that it will no longer facilitate police’s warrantless requests for footage from Ring users.
Now, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users.
Amazon today announced that it is end-of-lifing Request for Assistance (RFA), a controversial tool that allowed police and fire departments to request doorbell video through Ring’s Neighbors app.
“Public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Neighbors app head, Eric Kuhn, noted in a blog post.
In 2021, Amazon made police requests public as part of its biannual transparency report.
Amazon today announced that it is end-of-lifing Request for Assistance (RFA), a controversial tool that allowed police and fire departments to request doorbell video through Ring’s Neighbors app.
“Public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Neighbors app head, Eric Kuhn, noted in a blog post.
“They will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive video in the app.
Public safety agency posts are still public, and will be available for users to view on the Neighbors app feed and on the agency’s profile.”The feature has been a major concern for privacy advocates for a number of years.
In 2021, Amazon made police requests public as part of its biannual transparency report.
