Use of HTTPS will be a must for all iOS Apps by 2017! Apple said!

During WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) Ivan KrstiÄ‡ (Head of Security Engineering and Architecture at Apple) announced that by the end of 2016, use of HTTPS will be a must for all the applications which are available on iOS App Store. Apple wants a secure connection between application and its server for the security of user’s data. Last year Apple introduced ATS (Application Transport Security) named new security feature to protect all the connections between an application and its server. Apple introduced this feature in OS X 10.11 and iOS 9.0.

It’s Benefits?

Ivan KrstiÄ‡ said, there will be an extra layer of security at the transport layer of applications. TLS v1.2 channel will encrypt all the data which application will send to server. This type of security is a must, especially for the media. Users will experience a new level of data security. In the WWDC of 2016, Encryption was the theme of conference. Apple was showing their dedication towards end-to-encryption and data privacy by telling their future plans about it. HTTPS is the secure version of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which communicates with the server in encrypted form.

Instructions For iOS Developers?

As per new policy of Apple, iOS Developers have to use ATS (Application Transport Security) feature. Otherwise, their apps will not be accepted by Apple. Once Apple finalise their decision, all the current apps also need to use HTTPS. If Developers are facing serious issues for this redirection process, they can submit their reasons to apple support team. Apple’s team of developers will test the issues and after that they can allow developers to use the current version of application but for some particular time.

“If Developers will not activate this ATS feature by using HTTPS, their applications will not work.”

Google is Also Encouraging Developers To Use HTTPS

When Apple introduced ATS feature last year, a number of tips were provided by Google to Android developers and iOS to activate this feature. Google also represented a report on world’s top 100 websites to show the benefits of this feature. Although, more than 80 percent products are using HTTPS which have been advertised by Search Engines, but still a number of third party vendors are not using this facility which is creating security issues for developers.