Hacker News Reader

Comment by somerandom2407 | Hacker News Reader

It's terrible news for anyone who has some responsibility for the security of environments in which these devices are used.

Right now we have a relatively high confidence that as long as the devices are not jailbroken and are kept up to date they are relatively secure.

What this change means for people like me is that either there is some capability to detect whether third-party app stores are in use on a device and we will set a policy that disallows anyone using such things from accessing company data/services, or we have to lock out the devices altogether.

View on HN

The entire world doesn't want their devices that they bought and own to be beholden to the corporate whims of Apple or Google just so your job can be easier.

Surely it's possible to treat phones the same way as computers in corporate settings? Normal users aren't usually allowed to install whatever they want on their work PC, so why their work phone?

I think they were talking about bring your own device.

How many people bring their own laptop to work? (ignoring self-employed people and the like which this line of thinking really doesn't apply to) Phones should be treated the same way.

Personal devices shouldn't be used for work purposes to begin with. If work has security requirements regarding what phone and what condition it is in, they better be supplying their own phone to ensure those requirements are satisfied.

Vast majority of the people don't have the need for a separate work phone. But they benefit from accessing their work email, Teams chat, calendar, etc. from their phones.

If work wants to be picky about what devices can access those things, but still want their employees to do so, they should provide devices for that. If they don't, well, then the employees get to not do work during non-work hours.

> But they benefit from accessing their work email, Teams chat, calendar, etc. from their phones.

No, they don't benefit (cause it means they check work mail on weekends or evenings), but their employer do...

The ruling doesn't ask Apple to get rid of app sandboxing. The ruling explicitly notes this:

> Moreover, because iOS apps are sandboxed, as implemented in other jurisdictions, apps available through alternative distribution will be sandboxed, which further strengthens security and reduces the likelihood that any app will compromise other apps [...]

Or your company buys phones for its employees and allows only those work phones on its networks. I understand that this is an extra cost and phones are maybe more expensive than some laptops good enough for working with Office.

"Billions of consumer phones must be locked down because our IT department is completely incompetent and incapable of providing locked down work devices"

Some people have a life outside of work and don't really need "the security of environments"

Uhm, disallowing third-party stores, sure, but you draw a line that allows a non-jailbroken and updated device to be able to access company data? How is the lack of third-party app stores gonna prevent someone from sending sensitive data through the Mail app or to iCloud? Shouldn't company devices be managed with MDM to begin with?

> It's terrible news for anyone who has some responsibility for the security of environments in which these devices are used.

On the contrary, it allows app and payment security to be better than what Apple offers.

It also allows it to be much worse too. I can't wait to do tech support for my grandparents that followed the instructions to install ScamAppStore to install an app they saw on a Facebook ad.

I do tech support for my parents that both use Android. Haven't had a sideloading incident once in the decade+ they've used it (although I did show my dad NewPipe, which he uses constantly now).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com