With its heightened emphasis on security, iPhone 15 Pro takes mobile privacy to the next level. Learn about its cutting-edge features, including email encryption and the iOS 15 App Privacy Report.
Apple maintains strict control over the App Store, ensuring apps are free of malware and don’t access sensitive information. The new App Privacy Report builds on this, showing you which permissions your apps have and how often they use them.
Face ID and Touch ID Biometrics
While Face ID is a more convenient method of unlocking your iPhone, many people prefer the ease of Touch ID. Simply place your finger on the sensor and swipe up to unlock or access apps.
The sensors in both devices are encased in sapphire crystal-one of the clearest and hardest materials available. This protects the fingerprint sensor and ensures that only the authenticated user can use the phone.
Both sensors scan the surface of your finger, analyzing not just the dead skin on top but also the living tissue beneath. Apple says that this makes it nearly impossible to fool with fake or severed fingers, smudged prints, or twins (as long as the fingerprints aren’t identical).
Both technologies work best when used in combination with a device passcode or password. This is why Apple insists that Face ID and Touch ID shouldn’t be used as a standalone security measure. It should be used in conjunction with a strong, unique passcode or password, and should be enabled only after you’ve enrolled it to your device.
Enhanced Encryption and Data Protection
Apple’s Enhanced Encryption feature uses end-to-end encryption to protect users’ personal data. It also allows them to back up and restore their personal information and data from the iCloud with a recovery code that is generated only once while turning on the Enhanced Encryption feature.
The apple iphone 15 pro series also offers critical safety capabilities to help users when it matters most, including Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via satellite. Apple claims that the latter is already helping save lives across 14 countries and regions on three continents.
Finally, the iPhone 15 Pro lineup will also feature a new USB-C connector that is faster than the previous Lightning port. This is a big deal given that wired performance is one of the biggest limitations in older iOS devices. It would be nice if all syncing data were end-to-end encrypted by default, though. That would have been a significant security upgrade. This is something that Apple should work towards.
Secure Enclave for Sensitive Data
The Secure Enclave handles encryption keys and biometric data like Touch ID. It also protects data from attacks like physical tampering and side-channel attacks. To do so, it needs to be completely isolated from the rest of the device.
This is why it has its own chip with dedicated memory and an independent AES engine. It also has its own coprocessor to prevent it from being overheard by other parts of the system on chip, and a hardware random number generator.
In addition, the Secure Enclave uses a custom L4 microkernel that operates at a lower clock speed to protect it against side-channel attacks. It also has 4MB of flash storage that is used exclusively to store 256-bit elliptic curve private keys. These keys are never synced to the cloud or directly seen by the application processor.
The Secure Enclave also has counter lockboxes that limit the number of unlock attempts. Once the attempt limit is exceeded, the counter lockboxes will wipe all the passcode-protected data from the phone.
iOS 15 App Privacy Report
Apple continues to prioritize privacy with iOS 15 and its new App Privacy Report feature, which allows users to learn more about the information their apps have access to. This is a natural extension of the app tracking transparency introduced with iOS 14 last year, which prevents apps from siphoning data without user consent.
When enabled in Settings, the App Privacy Report gives you a look at what info your apps have access to, such as their permissions on sensors like location and camera, media library or microphone, as well as app network activity. It’s broken up into sections for easier understanding, such as the Data & Sensor Access section, which shows a list of all apps that have accessed certain sensors and data that were granted through privacy permissions.
If you want to turn off App Privacy Report, you can do so in Settings, and the feature will stop recording app activity immediately. However, the existing data will still be there until you manually delete it.