You might have read our report on the increasing of security by Google on Android L, automatically encrypting user personal information and restricting access to pictures, emails and other personal correspondence without a password.
In an additional initiative to prevent hacking by shady individuals as well as the intrusion into user data by government agencies, Google has teamed up with Dropbox in order to do away with these threats, as well as to make security technology more transparent for users. The move is in conjunction with Simply Secure, a new organisation whose mission is to make security safe, easy and fun. We think everyone should be able to get behind that.
“We believe that people shouldn’t have to make a trade-off between security and ease of use. This is why we’re happy to support Simply Secure, a new organization dedicated to improving the usability and safety of open-source tools that help people secure their online lives,” said Google.
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In the next few months, the two companies will be working together with open-source developers and designers. Google and Dropbox aim to take security technologies such as Open Whisper Systems, The Guardian Project and Off-the-Record Messaging and boil them down to a format which is much easier for users to comprehend.
The move by Google and Dropbox is based on four fundamental principles, which hopefully will govern how the two take these existing technologies and adapt them for easier use. Here are the four cornerstones of the group’s mission.
- The future of a positive, accessible, and people-centered Internet requires trustworthy privacy and security.
- If privacy and security aren’t easy and intuitive, they don’t work. Usability is key.
- Technology should respect the user’s desire for privacy and security.
- Users shouldn’t have to choose between services they like and services that are secure; they should be able to easily adopt privacy and security solutions for existing services.
The collaboration between Google, Dropbox and Simply Secure represents one of the first major pushes back from big companies against the poor data security practices of the tech industry, as well as a big boost to user privacy.
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We hope to see a future product or service, even lessons, in how to make security a priority for even the most basic users of modern tech. We’ll report on the outcome of the partnership as information appears.
Source: Simply Secure
Via: TechSpot