“Services like Virtru will probably give most commercial users a degree of security that only governments have enjoyed to this point,” said Cedric Leighton, a former NSA official who does not know the Ackerly brothers. Seeing the great demand to protect personal and commercial documents, the Ackerly brothers are now deploying that platform to a much wider audience.
While working at the NSA, Will Ackerly helped invent an encryption format that has become the standard for sharing sensitive data between U.S. We’re trying to meet that need,” said John Ackerly, a former White House official who co-founded Virtru with his brother Will. The issue is people don’t know where to go to take action. Virtru, which has received $4 million in angel financing, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday and has already attracted interest from a number of potential corporate customers, including big Wall Street banks. Hoping to seize upon amplified privacy concerns, a former National Security Agency architect launched a free service this week that allows users to easily encrypt their Gmail, Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Outlook emails. The surveillance bombshells revealed by Edward Snowden have prompted many Americans to reconsider what they say and do online.
