Tag: Security

Apple devices have struck like an eye-popping thunder bolt in midst of the dark boredom filled consumerism of our generation. The iPhone and iPad have taken the term ‘user-friendly’ to a whole new level and have generally met great resonance from people belonging to all walks of life. Same holds for work places, however many experts are skeptical about Apple’s ostensibly clandestine ways regarding security issues, which according to them render these devices incongruous for adoption by enterprises.

And then the Siri Popped out of the Bottle…”your wish is my DEMAND!”
Most of us our familiar with the magical feature Siri in iPhone 4S and for those who have been living on the moon for most of recent history it is a virtual assistant that on the surface works like a genie allowing you to command your tasks like sending messages. It has the capacity to understand your voice, know those meanings that are traditionally not expected to be translated in binary logic and even talks back to you. So basically it can be an easy way for you to communicate with your iPhone, a really smart virtual assistant that understands your multiple commands intelligently (basically the Robin to your Batman) and can be your companion in emptiness- well you can excuse this one. For those of you raising eyebrows with arrière pensée lingering on their minds that it’s just too good to be true…Behold!

Take out the big guns and start aiming for the Apples
IBM disables Siri on employee iPhones as a sensitive security concern because the voice data exchanged is uploaded to the Apple cloud. Several calls have been made to Apple for revealing the purposes and processes for storage and analysis of this data. However, the fact that Apple has shown inactivity in this matter is being perceived by many companies is suspicious and apathetic. Chris Eng, a research official at Vera code favors this point by implying that the phones might not be capable for the computational capacity that it requires. But he still points to the fact that Apple should make public what they are doing with this data by coming out and saying that they are not storing it, if that’s the case. Daniel Ford, chief security officer at Sterling also agrees with Eng in that he does not find it surprising that enterprises are intimidated by it as there is no official word about it from Apple. Paul Henry, a security and forensic analyst at Lumension represents another brick in this wall, as he points out how there have been privacy and security concerns associated with Apple previously.

Apples and Oranges
Henry also notes that Google and Microsoft have been more disclosing with regards to security in their products where as Apple, despite consumer-orientation, has not developed such terms with security managers and enterprises as of now. Nonetheless, he adds that there are certainly clear signs from Apple to being more responsive regarding security so that they can also be adopted in government sectors and enterprises as readily. Apple’s release of “iOS Security, May 2012” is documented explanation about security in iOS devices, an important example in this vein.

While Apple devices continue to spread across the Globe and are met with great enthusiasm amongst private users, there remain some fears and insecurities about security on the part of enterprises which can be attributed a lack of responsive by Apple in the past. However, the trends have been changing and it might not be long before the strained relationship is straightened out.