Apple took a step further in its continuous effort to offer people even better ways to safeguard private data when it unveiled new cutting-edge security capabilities aimed at defending against attacks on user data in the cloud.
Advanced Data Protection allows trusted devices of iCloud users sole access to the data encryption for the majority of their data. It is already available in the U.S. for participants in the Apple Beta Software Program and will be available to all U.S. customers by the end of the year.
According to a press release from Apple, the only essential categories excluded from Advanced-Data Protection are iCloud Mail, Contacts, and Calendar due to the necessity to interoperate with the worldwide email, contacts, and calendar systems.
Apple apparently abandoned plans to provide end-to-end encryption to iCloud backups after the FBI objected. Privacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have long urged Apple to do this.
These new features join a number of other safeguards that make Apple products the most secure on the market, including the setups directly into our specially made chips with efficient system encryption and data protections and features like Lockdown Mode, which provides an extremely high level of optional security for users like journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats. Apple is committed to enhancing device and cloud security or continuously introducing additional safeguards.
Despite the fact that the great majority of users will never be the target of extremely sophisticated assaults, the functionality adds an essential degree of security for users. If a highly skilled opponent, such as a state-sponsored attacker, were ever to be successful in accessing cloud servers and inserting its personal device to spy on these encrypted communications, conversations between users who have activated iMessage Contact Key Verification receive immediate alerts.
According to an Apple official, the company has been trying to add hardware keys for some time, but most recent version of FIDO standards, it was cautious about implementation and usability. A recent increase in the availability of the keys, the spokesman added, as well as evolving and intensifying threats, were further driving factors for the business.
