Is Privacy the New Must Have Feature?

At Apple’s recent Worldwide Developer’s Conference, the Cupertino-based company heavily touted its commitment to protecting its users’ privacy. The move comes off company CEO Tim Cook’s attack on rival companies, like Facebook and Google, business models which monetise their users’ data to advertising companies.

Distinguishing Itself from Competitors

Despite showing off its new pro-active Siri assistant, the company stressed that while Apple wants its devices to be more personal than ever, learning more about you as you use it, none of this information will be stored outside of the device. This new version of Siri is said to go head to head with Google’s Google Now service, which also saw an update at the recent I/O conference. Google Now is an opt-in service that the company is heavily pushing as part of the new wave of so called contextual computing, where devices can adjust to the user’s behaviour and surroundings atomically. For instance, Google Now could recommend that you download a currency conversion app because it sees your taking a flight overseas. It can also create appointments in your calendars, set reminders, and automate other daily tasks from the information it collects from your email and calendar.

Apple’s service, meanwhile, also plans to learn your habits. Using iOS 9’s new Spotlight screen, available by swiping left on the home screen, you’ll see information that reflects your situation. For instance, if you call someone at work the same time every day, the option to call that person will be available to you in one tap without having to open your phone directory. Similarly, if the first thing you do in a morning is listen to some music, the music app will automatically open the moment you plug in your earphones. However, Apple promises that this data is stored securely on the device itself, rather than on an off-site server. While this has security benefits, these limitations mean that some of the service’s features don’t always stack up to the feature set of its rivals.

What Makes a Company Secure?

With companies that hold so much of our information, whether it be personal or financial data, security is a major priority. These businesses have to employ the latest in online data encryption standards. Encryption converts ordinary, unprotected data, also called plain text, into an encrypted file that needs a key or password to unlock it. There are two main types of encryption, public key and symmetric. The former refers to algorithms that require two separate keys, one of which is kept private and one of which is public. The latter refers to algorithms that use the same cryptographic keys for both encryption of plain text and decryption of cipher text. These keys may be identical or there may be a simple transformation to go between the two keys.

Just encrypting a user’s data isn’t enough though. It’s still possible for a skilled hacker to eventually break through using a variety of different cracking algorithms. This is why companies employ penetration testers. A pentest is an attack on a computer network that was self-inflicted, either by an internal team or through a hired third-party. This allows the company to gain a better understanding of the security system’s current weaknesses and help strengthen any of the vulnerabilities. A qualified team of specialists will employ a variety of unique techniques to test the network’s strength, and will be able to replay effective feedback on the areas they could improve upon in the event of a real, malicious attack.

Whichever side you stand on, as technology dependence on the cloud continues the debates show no signs of going away. Let us know what you think in the comments below.