14 DAY TRIAL // The United States Democratic National Committee is one of the organizations favoring iPhones over Android, with Bob Lord, the chief information security officer, explaining that it’s the security that makes the difference between the two.
Following the TE scandal, which highlighted the vulnerabilities of Google’s mobile platform, the DNC has started pushing more US officials to Apple devices, highlighting the increased security of iPhones with every occasion.
In a recent interview with Forbes, Lord reiterated the same idea, emphasizing that when comparing Android and iOS, it’s pretty clear that Apple ships security updates much faster than all companies running Google’s mobile OS.
This is what most Democratic organizations think, according to Lord, and this is one of the reasons they recommend giving up on Android for iPhone.
“It's very hard for me to know if you've purchased a particular phone from a vendor what their appetite for doing quality assurance is,” he said when discussing the issue of security updates on Android.
Monthly security updates on Android
While Google releases monthly security updates for Android, device manufacturers can stick with their own schedule, and some need more time to ship the same patches to their phones. One such example is Samsung, which is currently the world’s number one phone maker and which until recently has had a hard time rolling out these security updates to all its devices every month.
So Lord says that sticking with iPhone just seems to be the right decision for US officials, though he emphasizes that everything can change in the future if Android device makers can also guarantee fast security updates for their smartphones.
“We have a bias currently towards the iPhone,” Lord said. “But evidence could change our minds... this is not religious debate.”
While it’s hard to estimate how many US officials would replace Android with iPhone based on this recommendation, Lord’s statements give Apple an important image boost just at the right time. The Cupertino-based tech giant has just started selling the new-generation iPhones in the United States.