Microsoft is reportedly asking employees in China to ditch Android phones at work and use only iPhones due to security concerns.
According to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, Microsoft asked its team members in China to deliver their Android-based business phones in September and replace them with iPhone 15. With this change, Microsoft employees in China will be able to log in to their work devices using only iPhones.
According to the news, this step is part of the importance Microsoft attaches to security, which became the company’s priority in May. Bloomberg claims that Microsoft stated in its correspondence that this change was made because the Google Play application store is not officially available in China. This means Android devices will not be able to receive updates for Microsoft Authenticator and other security and identity applications that employees need to use.
This security-focused change that Microsoft made for its China team came after a series of major breaches in the company’s systems. One of these was the incident in the summer of 2023, which resulted in a China-based group accessing Outlook email accounts in the US and Europe.
Following this incident, Microsoft announced that it was launching a new “Secure Future Initiative” program in November 2023 to increase overall cybersecurity efforts. However, in early January 2024, the company announced that a Russia-based hacker group had managed to access the email accounts of some senior executives. The company has since announced that security will be its top priority for the foreseeable future, and employees’ wages and bonuses may be affected depending on their contributions to cybersecurity.
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