iPhone News Updated

Myth 6: It’s really Microsoft’s fault

Myth 6: It’s really Microsoft’s fault

One of the more ludicrous arguments I’ve seen is that it’s not Apple’s fault that the iPhone OS was misreporting to Exchange that it supported on-device encryption when it did not.

It’s Microsoft’s fault for not catching the lie.

That’s impossible. As the folks at Internet security firm VeriSign explain, “It appears all policy conformance claims (like this ActiveSync mailbox policy on device-encryption claim from the iPhone) are not programmatically verifiable, so they’re not programmatically enforceable.” In other words, Exchange can’t peer into a client device and figure out what’s going on under the hood; it has to rely on the client to be honest.

That makes sense: How could Exchange or any server independently access all the kinds of devices out there and figure out how they’re set?

Comments are closed.