The cloud market has seen an exponential increase in 2020 and this trend was observed amid the steepest economic contraction in modern history. Therefore, it may not come as a surprise that Apple, a major player in the cloud industry, has emerged as Google’s largest customer of cloud data services, according to a report. Another report states that Apple spent $300 million for Google cloud storage services in 2021 alone, a 50% increase from last year. Even though this seems like a big amount, it is worth it. According to Law Floyd, director of cloud services at Telos, using Google Cloud makes sense as it is exponentially faster and cheaper, as opposed to obtaining more data centre space, power, cooling, and equipment.
According to a report, recently Apple has encrypted its iCloud data and because of this google and AWS will not be able to access the customer’s iCloud information stored on their platform. This decision has been supported by some security researchers, who even urged other companies to consider the shared responsibility model with cloud service providers.
This move of Apple aligns with trends toward greater cybersecurity safeguards and the company goals as well. Apple has always been considered a torchbearer of privacy and security amongst providers because the company has and continues to spend millions to make their devices secure & offer encryption of the highest levels. Apple, with its advertising and consistency, has cultivated an image as a provider with security and privacy as one of its primary concerns.
Apple’s move to encrypt data stored in google cloud can be seen as a “role model approach” to using infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) according to Dirk Schrader, global vice president of security research at New Net Technologies.
“Google calls this the ‘customer’s security responsibilities’ and expects the customer to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk in respect of the customer’s data,” Schrader said. In short, the customer cannot defer the risk to Google, which is a basic misunderstanding for many companies using IaaS.
