Apple Designing Its Own Servers To Avoid Snooping
Apple has invested many years trying to come up with an internal resolution that can deal with the amount of information that the company needs to keep photos, messages, Apple Music, iTunes, the App Store and others running easily. More importantly, the company is also trying to keep hackers and spies out of its network by designing its own hardware.
Apple depends heavily on different cloud vendors, for example,Microsoft, Amazon and most recently Google, for hosting its iCloud services. As the company does not have enough experience in giving cloud infrastructure in-house, it is required to stay with these vendors for at least a few years. However, the company seems to have plans in place to design its own servers, which would be free from backdoors and suspicious chips.
"Apple has long suspected that servers it ordered from the traditional supply chain were intercepted during shipping, with additional chips and firmware added to them by unknown third parties in order to make them vulnerable to infiltration, according to a person familiar with the matter," the report said. "At one point, Apple even assigned people to take photographs of motherboards and annotate the function of each chip, explaining why it was supposed to be there. Building its own servers with motherboards it designed would be the most surefire way for Apple to prevent unauthorized snooping via extra chips."
According to a report from The Information, Apple knows that it would have to design its own servers from scratch if it wants to avoid any sort of interception by the government or other agencies using rogue chips. The company recently reiterated its commitment to secure the protection of its users, despite the fact that it is being pressured by the US government to deliver access to a criminal's encrypted iPhone data.
The Information's source noted that "you can’t go take an X-Ray of every computer that hits the floor. You want to make sure there’s no extracurricular activity."
Security is one of the reasons why Apple might plan to build its own servers, the other reason could be its high-performance expectation from its dealers. Apple's tight control over its hardware and software has so far ensured a high-quality experience for its users, but the company's services haven't been of the same level. The company seems to attribute this to its cloud partners, and planning its own servers appears to be the solution that could connect the performance gap.