Apple employees and iCloud

Recent stories about Apple employees have exposed some of the conditions that Apple requires for employment. One of those conditions is to link one's personal iCloud account to the Apple-assigned employee iCloud account.

Why do this? It seems an odd request, to merge one's personal iCloud account with the corporate iCloud account. Apple has not explained the reason for this policy (I did not ask Apple for comment) and Apple employees have not stated a reason either.

I have an idea. It's not that Apple is being evil. Instead, Apple is trying to keep secrets, secret.

Apple, more than most companies, is concerned with corporate secrets. It carefully guards its designs for new products. It limits communication between employees to only those groups that are part of the work assignment.

Apple also requires employees to agree to the "Apple can search you or your equipment whenever on Apple property" clause in its hiring contracts.

Apple does not want secrets to leak out, and it takes steps to keep secrets, well, secret.

I expect that Apple requires employees to use the corporate e-mail system and not personal e-mail accounts such as Yahoo, GMail, or Microsoft Outlook. Apple can scan messages in its internal e-mail system and identify leaked information, but it cannot scan external services. It probably blocks those web sites on its internal network.

Apple probably also blocks social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. When you're at work for Apple, you're at work for Apple, and not allowed to use such sites. Information could be shared via those sites, something Apple wants to prevent.

File sharing sites such as DropBox, BOX, and Microsoft OneDrive are other services that could allow for the sharing of information. Apple probably blocks those sites, too.

Apple may go as far as preventing people from attaching USB drives to their work computers.

So Apple has built an electronic fence around employees, to keep corporate date inside and not allow designs for new products to escape. That all makes sense.

The one problem in this scheme is iCloud.

Apple cannot block iCloud. They use it to share data and collaborate on projects. Blocking iCloud would isolate employees and limit the sharing of information to e-mail, which is far less effective for sharing data. iCloud can let multiple people work on the same file, at the same time, and always with the latest version of the file. Forcing people to share data via e-mail would eliminate real-time collaboration and allow for older versions of files -- and the confusion that would result.

So Apple must use iCloud. But iCloud allows people to switch from one iCloud account to another, and employees could switch from the corporate iCloud account to their personal account, send files out (just what Apple does not want), and then switch back to the corporate iCloud account. This is a "hole" in the security "fence".

The answer to this last problem is simple: require employees to link their personal iCloud to the corporate iCloud account. I imagine that their personal account, once linked, becomes part of the monitoring process for the corporate iCloud account, and closes the "hole" in the "fence".

This is why (I think) Apple requires employees to link their personal iCloud account to their corporate iCloud account. Linking accounts is a hack to close a hole in Apple's security.