But this year, give the gift of good security (and privacy) and eschew tech that can have untoward risks or repercussions.
Location data is some of the most sensitive data belonging to a person; location can determine where someone was at a particular time, which can be highly revealing and invasive.
Even one of the better-known family tracking apps, Life360, was caught selling the precise location data of its users to data brokers.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t discuss the benefits and pitfalls of tracking your kids with your kids.
And this year, another smart sex-toy maker exposed the user and location data of its customers thanks to its leaky servers, which the company has yet to fix.
Okta, the identity and access management company, is acquiring security firm Spera.
Spera — which my colleague Frederic has covered previously — was co-founded several years ago by entrepreneurs Dor Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch.
Spera, which has about 25 employees, had raised $10 million prior to the Okta acquisition.
Okta sees Spera enabling its customers to better assess the security posture of their identity infrastructure as well as their apps and services — and attracting new customers to the Okta platform.
“With Spera, we’ll equip our customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management and quickly identify, detect and remediate risks,” the blog post continues.
Database management giant MongoDB says it’s investigating a security incident that has resulted in the exposure of some information about customers.
In an update published on Sunday, MongoDB said does not believe hackers accessed any customer data stored in MongoDB Atlas, the company’s hosted database offering.
For one customer, this included system logs, MongoDB said.
System logs can include information about the running of a database or its underlying system.
MongoDB declined to say how many customers may be affected by the compromise of its corporate systems.
Now, one of the companies building security tools for SMBs has raised a round of funding to expand its business, underscoring the demand in the market for better defenses.
It’s no longer selling directly to SMBs but is working with managed service providers that in turn sell and manage IT services for SMBs.
MSPs, it found, were the primary route to getting their product to get used by SMBs (meaning direct business was not taking off).
“Guardz has developed an impressive, holistic, and user-friendly cybersecurity and cyber insurance risk-assessment platform that is cleverly tailored to MSPs, who serve the often-overlooked long-tail small business market.
We are excited to lead this funding round and join the Guardz team on their journey to secure the digital world for those who today need it most.”
True Anomaly has closed $100 million in new funding, a strong signal that the appetite for startups operating at the intersection of space and defense is far from abating.
The new round was led by Riot Ventures, with participation from Eclipse, ACME Capital, Menlo Ventures, Narya, 645 Ventures, Rocketship.vc, Champion Hill Ventures and FiveNine Ventures.
True Anomaly is looking to fill a critical gap in space situational awareness and defensive operations through software and hardware, including the line of autonomous spacecraft capable of rendezvous and proximity operations.
In previous interviews with TechCrunch, True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers called out what he sees as a critical “information asymmetry” between the U.S. and its adversaries in space.
Jackal, Mosaic and the company’s other work in space domain awareness are meant to close that gap.
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