As you may have heard, Brazil announced it would block Whatsapp after it failed to comply with legal demands, only for a judge to overturn the decision hours later. Dr Nithin Thomas, Co-Founder and CEO of security start up SQR Systems, comment that how tech companies must manage the balance between security and compliance with the law.
[su_note note_color=”#ffffcc” text_color=”#00000″]Dr Nithin Thomas, Founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Firm SQR Systems :
“The temporary ban on the use of Whatsapp in Brazil, which has now been lifted, is yet another incident this year of encryption technology getting in the way of criminal investigations. However, we must recognise the need to allow the use of encryption for legitimate protection of sensitive personal and business critical data. This means we must be careful not to pursue the idea of creating back doors in encryption technology, as it would provide an entry point not only for the intelligence services but also for hackers, rendering it unworkable.
“A more sustainable approach lies in equipping the organisations and individuals that own the data with the ability to access and control the data themselves, allowing them to comply with legal needs without compromising security. This requires communications service providers to re-think their communications security architecture and corporate policy to enable them to deal with legal intercepts.
“By passing responsibility for lawful disclosure to the individuals and organisations that own the data we are more likely to be able to build more transparency between the authorities and the users than one which occurs behind closed doors or based on the judgement of tech vendors.”[/su_note][su_box title=”About Dr. Nithin Thomas” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″]
Nithin Thomas is a technology entrepreneur with expertise in development and commercialisation of technology research, having developed much of the early technology at SQR Systems during his academic career at the University of Bristol. He is the CEO and Co-founder of SQR Systems, where he has grown the company from a concept to early revenues, successfully delivering R&D projects through various private and public funded research programmes focussing on cybersecurity and secure data transmission. Prior to SQR Systems, Nithin worked in sales and marketing at a global technology consultancy.[/su_box]
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