Facebook is reportedly looking to purchase a major cybersecurity firm to help protect its users’ data after two high-profile controversies in 2018.
According to The Information, Facebook is hoping that the move will go some way to helping repair its reputation. It has four potential companies in mind.
There is no news at the moment as to which one will form a partnership with Mark Zuckerberg, but Demisto, JASK, ZeroFOX and Swimlane are believed to be in the running.
Facebook is hoping to wrap up a deal by the end of the year and start 2019 on a clean slate.
According to TIME, Zuckerberg has already committed to doubling the number of Facebook employees from 10,000 to 20,000 in the next few months.
The difficulties started with the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March, which exposed the fact that a number of third-parties had unrestricted access to users’ private data.
This led to members leaving the platform in large numbers and contributed to Facebook recording poor financial results at the end of the second quarter.
As a result, the share prices fell by more than 20% and the company effectively lost $120 billion overnight.
The results of Facebook’s 2018 Q3 are scheduled to be published on Tuesday, October 30th.
A few weeks ago, Facebook suffered its biggest breach to date as more than 50 million profiles were compromised when hackers gained user access tokens.
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