If you haven’t heard already, a Wired Magazine journalist’s iCloud account was hacked into last Friday, creating shockwaves in the tech world and shedding some light on questionable security measures. Through exploitation of the AppleCare Technician procedures and some dot-connecting between various online accounts, an anonymous party known only as “Phobia” found their way into Mat Honan’s life, sending profane tweets, deleting his data stored on iCloud, and remotely wiping his Apple devices clean. With more people beginning to use the cloud as their only means of storage, this horror story illustrates how doing so can be absolutely catastrophic.
Before speaking any further about the problems surrounding iCloud’s security issues, I have to mention that Mat Honan himself has admitted that this disaster is largely the fault of his own, for not backing up his data and for connecting his accounts in such a way that the compromising of one could allow others to be accessed as well. Clearly, the blame falls upon the party with malicious intent to even attempt such an act, but the extent of the damage caused could have been directly prevented by the victim. With that being said, it also calls to attention the inadequacy of the cloud as a sole storage method.
Because your data is in someone else’s hands, you immediately put your data at risk that would not be present if you had not used the cloud. It does, however, offer benefits of an off-site backup, secure from, say, a house fire; and the ability to access the data from just about anywhere with an internet connection. Opening these channels to yourself also means a increasing the number of ways hackers can find their way into your account. While storing data on the cloud is a viable solution, ensure that it is not your only one.
“Phobia” was able to wreak so much havoc because he/she/they could follow the links between Honan’s accounts, as well as find loopholes in Amazon’s and Apple’s security systems. For the entire explanation, click here to go to the Wired Magazine article written by Mat Honan himself.
At Appfluence, we understand the importance of security in data storage and access. That is why Priority Matrix allows you to sync data over the cloud or work offline if you want to, exporting your .pmatrix files from one device to the next.
Let us know in the comments, or at feedback@appfluence.com, if you have any questions about your data security at Appfluence.
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