One of the best features of iOS, and that Android, to date, has not been able to match, even to approach it, are your backup copies. Whether through iTunes, as in the cloud of iCloud, Apple keeps accurate backup copies of our device, and all data, so that, in case of loss, change of phone, or simply if we want to restore it to your original values, we can restore it as we had it right at the time of its last backup.
The backup copies of our iPhones, iPads, and iPods are, really, very interesting, as we have explained. However, they are also very dangerous since a bad configuration of them can endanger our data. For example, if the backup stored on our computer is not encrypted, anyone with access to the computer will be able to access all our data, among which are, for example, our personal photos or our WhatsApp chats.
If we usually make backup copies from iTunes of our iDevices in our computer, then we will explain how to encrypt them correctly to avoid that any other user without permission can access this copied data.
Enables encryption of iOS backups in iTunes
To start protecting our backups on iOS and save them securely and encrypted on our device, we must first install iTunes on our computer and link our smartphone to it to start managing it.
Once we are inside the section of iTunes, we will locate the options of “Summary”> ” Backup copies ” and we will mark, if it is not already, the option of ” Encrypt backup of our iPhone “, for which, iTunes will ask us to enter a password, as secure as possible, to encrypt our account with it.
From now on, when we make a backup of our iPhone, or another device, with iTunes, be it on the computer, it will be protected with our password and, if we forget or lose it, it will not be possible to recover it or access to the data. Or at least that’s how it was until iOS 11.
How to protect our iTunes backups with iOS 11
With the launch of iOS 11, Apple wanted to implement an emergency system through which to restore a backup even without forgetting the encryption password. In this way, although the backup will remain secure and will be stored in an encrypted form, it is not necessary to know the password to restore the backup, it will be enough to know the device’s blocking code in order to restore it without major difficulty.
In this way, if anyone gets access to our device you can access our backup relatively easily.
Therefore, if we have already updated to iOS 11, or any later version, it is necessary to apply an additional security measure on our device that prevents anyone from breaking the security of our backup copies to access our data, and this measure of Security is the use of a secure lock PIN.
iOS allows us to configure 4- or 6-digit PIN codes. It is advisable to choose a 6-digit PIN, as random as possible, which avoids, or at least minimizes the probability that any person can guess by brute force, thus keeping our encrypted, secure and protected copies of prying eyes.
To configure a PIN code in iOS 11, we must go to Settings> Touch ID and Code, and change our blocking code from there.
The greater the security of the 6-digit PIN code of our iOS, the greater the security of our encrypted backup copies and the less likely that someone, without authorization, will access it.
