Facebook planning to acquire a cybersecurity firm to ramp up its defenses

Facebook doesn't want any more security flaws in its system.

| Published: Monday, October 22, 2018, 16:45 [IST]

Facebook is still healing from the hack that put 29 million user accounts at stake, but it may have a solution. According to The Information, Facebook is planning to acquire a 'major' cybersecurity firm and has already offered deals to "several" companies.

Facebook planning to acquire a cybersecurity firm to ramp up defenses

If the reports are to be believed, Zuckerberg is likely to buy software that could fold into its existing services, such as tools for giving heads up of hacking attempts or securing individual accounts.

It's still unclear how close Facebook is to confirm the deal, although it could close a purchase by the end of this year. The social media giant is yet to comment on the matter. The acquisition could help the company ramp up its defenses, and improve its expertise to reduce the chances of a coding mistake putting millions of accounts vulnerable.

Facebook's trustworthiness has taken a huge toll after the recent hacking scandal and the Cambridge Analytica fiasco that happened earlier this year. A hefty acquisition means the company is taking these security threats seriously.

The new move will also make other Facebook-owned companies like Instagram, WhatsApp intact to these security threats. There were reports that Instagram will share user location data with Facebook, researcher Jane Munchun Wong found earlier this week.

The feature is said to be in the experimental stage and it's unclear if the Facebook-owned platform has already made up its mind to deploy the new feature on a large scale. Instagram refers to the new feature as "Facebook Location History" and describes it as a method of tracking the GPS location of a user using Facebook's tools. Currently, the new functionality has only been seen on iOS, while no Android version of the app seems to have it.

Facebook has been planning a deep integration of Instagram and WhatsApp into its platform for a long time. Both founders of WhatsApp have left the firm over security disputes, followed by Instagram co-founders, who also departed for pretty much the same reasons.