Apple on Wednesday said it is beefing up its defence of data that users store in the cloud, a move that could thwart authorities and hackers.
The iPhone maker’s Advanced Data Protection plan extends end-to-end encryption beyond its iMessage service to photos and other data backed up to its iCloud storage service.
Apple said the move was urgent given an alarming increase in data breaches that had exposed 1.1 billion personal records across the globe in 2021, according to company research.
“Advanced Data Protection is Apple’s highest level of cloud data security,” said Ivan Krstić, Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture.
It gives “users a choice to protect the vast majority of their most sensitive iCloud data with end-to-end encryption so that it can only be decrypted on their trusted devices,” he added.
Apple told the Wall Street Journal that with the heightened security, it would no longer be able to hand over iMessage history and other files, even when investigators legally requested to do so.
The move will potentially rekindle a long period of standoffs involving technology firms and law enforcement.
Apple notably resisted a legal effort to weaken iPhone encryption to allow authorities to read messages from a suspect in a 2015 bombing in San Bernardino, California.
Police officials worldwide say encryption can protect criminals, terrorists and pornographers even when authorities have a legal warrant for an investigation.
Civil rights and privacy advocates and cybersecurity professionals, however, advocate encrypting data to protect against wrongful snooping by authorities and hackers.
“We constantly identify and mitigate emerging threats to (user) personal data on device and in the cloud,” Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said in a post.
Under the new setting, Apple said only iCloud Mail, Contacts, and Calendar would remain unencrypted because of the need to operate with other systems.
Apple said that the new level of security will be available in the United States by the end of this month and be rolled out globally next year.
Apple has championed data privacy to differentiate itself from tech giants Meta and Google, which closely track online activity by users to boost advertising revenue.