Sam Oliver
Apple's chief executive will reportedly be among those speaking to participants at Friday's White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, an event designed to bring together representatives from all sides of the cybersecurity and privacy debate.
At the summit, President Obama is widely expected to discuss his new cybersecurity "executive action" which will call for, among other things, increased cooperation between U.S. technology companies and the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. Cook's participation in the event was first noted by The Hill.
It is unclear exactly what role Cook will play, but several of the scheduled panels fall within the scope of his interests as Apple's CEO. Among those are a discussion of public-private collaboration for cybersecurity, improving cybersecurity practices at consumer-oriented businesses and organizations, promoting more secure payment technologies, and improving authentication by moving beyond the password.
Cook is uniquely positioned to speak on the latter topics. Apple Pay, the company's NFC-based mobile payment system, is designed with a number of security and privacy safeguards including network-level tokenization and biometric authentication via Touch ID.
Apple has also opened Touch ID itself to developers, allowing those who wish to eschew password-based authentication to do so by tapping into the iPhone and iPad's on-device fingerprint authentication. Numerous companies have adopted the system for their iOS apps, including financial firms like American Express.
The White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection will be held on Friday, Feb. 13 at Stanford University.
Malcolm Owen
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17 Comments
In before some idiot claims Cook is going to give the government a back door into iPhones.
*^^exactly
In before some idiot claims Cook is going to give the government a back door into iPhones.
Only in China
How about, showing up, because he has an environment that has security? I mean seriously when was the last time your iPhone was hijacked by malware, or the last time your whole system was encrypted, for ransom?
I'd find it ironic or facetious (or both) if Google were to speak about Android security...
How about, showing up, because he has an environment that has security? I mean seriously when was the last time your iPhone was hijacked by malware, or the last time your whole system was encrypted, for ransom?
^^^ True, I've never jailbroken mine, and I've never had any security issues.