Considering the recent high wave of cyber crime, which has caused many companies a lot of trouble and embarrassment, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has announced that its latest iOS 8 will have a special feature to deal with this issue; the operating system will encrypt user data and this encrypted data will become useless to hackers thus making their job extremely difficult and hopefully impossible.
Apple in late August suffered a massive iCloud accounts breach and the victims were well known celebrities, which made the incident even more high profile. It raised serious questions about the type and level of security Apple provides to its customers’ data and information.
To add fire to the fuel, Apple faces the possibility of being sued by a few of victim celebrities and may have to battle more lawsuits in the future. So this new encryption features seems like Apple’s reply to all the questions raised about its ability to protect its users.
Apple emphasized on the fact that encrypted data will be of no use to anyone—neither the company itself nor any law enforcement agencies. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). took a cold dig at Google by saying that Apple doesn’t use private user information to sell items to its users.
Google did not stay quiet after these remarks and came out with its own statement saying that it has been offering data encryption for over 3 years now (on Android devices). When the technology, Android L comes out, Google will offer data encryption by default, meaning the user won’t have to bother thinking about whether it’s enabled or not.
The interesting fact to note here is that both companies are doing what BlackBerry did way before them.
Google, like Apple, has faced its shares of controversies. One of the largest and the most recent was the hacking of 5 million Google accounts. The other is the allegation of reading private emails for target marketing purposes.
The data encryption feature is likely to be received well by the users; however it may not be welcomed that warmly by governments worldwide that are quite interested in data these two tech giants have. Encrypted data means the company doesn’t possess it, so obviously when the company doesn’t have the information it won’t be able to hand over anything to a demanding government or other law enforcement agencies – a very smart way of handling government pressure for allowing access to user data.
There’s still a loophole present. The user data on iCloud might still be accessible to authorities. This poses the question, if authorities could access it then what about hackers who, it seems, are too smart for everyone?
Here is another major question; if iCloud still isn’t private enough then how will this encryption feature protect iCloud hackings?
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and other companies that save user data on their servers should consider it their moral obligation to provide satisfactory security to its users. That is where one can’t help but appreciate this initiative by Apple because the tech giant is finally doing more than just issuing meaningless statements regarding hacking controversies.
