Apple Security Surprise As Google Deemed More Trustworthy In 2019

I would wager that most people, if asked to contemplate data security, would tend to think that Google isn't as trustworthy with their personal data as, say, Apple. After all, there are far more reports about Android vulnerabilities than there are iOS security issues. If you are a like-minded individual, you might want to sit down before reading the results of a survey which specifically asked the "who do you trust?" question.

Who do your trust with your data, Apple or Google?

According to a survey commissioned by cryptographic solutions vendor nCipher, 89% of respondents agreed that encryption is important. No great surprise there then. To get to the surprising statistics, you have to dig deeper into the results: when it comes to data encryption, Apple is not trusted as much as Google. Or Amazon as far as those in the U.S. are concerned.

Say what? Is this the same Google that recently confirmed that its camera app was vulnerable to remote attacker takeover to spy on the user? The same Google that recently confirmed a critical vulnerability that could lead to permanent denial of service for Android users? Yep, but remember that this survey wasn't asking about trust in the broader security sense; it was more narrowly focused on encrypting data.

Again, you might think Apple is on pretty solid ground here, even allowing for the odd glitch such when it was discovered that a Siri feature could leave some encrypted email text visible in plain text. There are far fewer negative stories out there regarding Apple encryption than there are positive ones. So why did the nCipher survey of 2,033 consumers, relatively evenly split between the U.S. (1,025) and the U.K. (1,008), conclude that Google is more trusted than Apple to encrypt personal data? That’s easy; the results are the results. More interestingly, perhaps, is why the survey participants came to that conclusion? That's a good question, and one that I cannot answer; please don't blame the messenger, then, as all I can do is report on the findings.

Google considered more trustworthy than Apple to encrypt data

Are you sitting down, Apple fans? Globally, Google (48.6%) was thought more likely to use encryption to protect data than Apple (46.8%). That was reasonably close in percentage point terms, but when asked who the most trusted company was actually to encrypt your personal data, the gap grew. Globally speaking, Google (37.2%) was some distance ahead of Apple (31.7%) for data encryption trust.

That same, "Which company do you most trust to encrypt your data?" question, when asked of an American audience, produced even more startling results. Google was still ahead of Apple, 42.6% as compared to 36.7%, but Apple was also behind Amazon (38.3%) rather than in front of it, as the global figures suggested.

"Despite great consensus on the importance of encryption," Peter Carlisle, vice-president of sales at nCipher Security, said, "less than half of all those surveyed don't trust institutions like the government or multinational companies like Google and Apple to protect their personal data with encryption." That, perhaps, is the most crucial statistic that we should be taking away from this survey rather than worrying about the distance between those Apple and Google numbers. Data privacy needs to be higher on the technical agenda everywhere, and those companies under the brightest of media spotlights need to be better at getting the "we take the security of your data seriously" message across.

That's something upon which, I hope, we can all agree.

I have reached out to Apple for a reaction to the nCipher survey findings and will update this article when such a statement is received.