Apple to Add Grade Crossings to Maps

Apple to Add Grade Crossings to Maps After Federal Recommendation. Apple will add grade crossings to Apple Maps after a safety recommendation from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Reports The New York Times. The recommendation comes after a two-year investigation into an accident that occurred after a driver got his truck stuck on railroad tracks while following directions from Google Maps.

Grade crossings, or level crossings, are defined as intersections where a rail line meets a roadway, and have become increasingly dangerous areas thanks in part to the rise of digital mapping services.   The case the NTSB cites in its recommendation is that of Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez, who misinterpreted directions from Google Maps and wound up on a poorly marked grade crossing. His truck, which was hauling a trailer, got stuck on the tracks. While Sanchez-Ramirez was able to abandon his vehicle, a train struck it and resulted in the death of an engineer and injuries to 32 others. There were more than 200 fatalities at grade crossings last year in the U.S. 

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At the time, Google's mapping application did not incorporate grade crossing data, according to NTSB findings. The federal safety agency argues that had Google Maps included such information, and perhaps a warning, Sanchez-Ramirez would have been less likely to mistakenly turn onto the tracks. 

Today, the NTSB issued a safety recommendation that Google and other map providers, like Apple, Should add exact locations of more than 200,000-grade crossings to their mapping data. The Federal Railroad Administration has been lobbying Apple and other tech companies to add the data for the past 18 months.

Along with Apple and Google, the NTSB is calling on Garmin, HERE, TomTom, INRIX, MapQuest, Microsoft Corporation, Omnitracs, OpenStreetMap US, Sensys Networks, StreetLight Data, Teletrac, and United Parcel Service of America to integrate the grade crossing and other rail data into their respective digital services. 

Source: MacRoumors

Appthority warns only 3% of enterprise apps comply with upcoming Apple security mandate

Apple is making a series of security changes for the new year – yet according to new research from Appthority, only 3% of enterprise apps are fully compliant with the new security mandate.

In June 2016, Apple announced that App Transport Security (ATS) will become a requirement for new App Store apps from 1 January 2017.

ATS, which was introduced in iOS 9, forces an app to connect to web services over an HTTPS connection rather than HTTP to keep data secure while in transit by encrypting it.

“Appthority researchers found that the majority of apps in the enterprise don’t fully utilize the best practices encryption standard, which should be a concern to enterprises,” said Robbie Forkish, vice-president of engineering at Appthority.

“The new ATS mandate only applies to new submissions to the App Store, and Apple will be allowing exceptions to ATS, so, while the requirement should strengthen data security, there will still be iOS apps not using data encryption in enterprise environments, even after 1 January 2017.

“For this reason, it’s incredibly important that businesses have visibility into, and management of, the risks related to apps with these exceptions, as they can put enterprise data at risk,” he said.

The research also revealed 55% of apps in use by enterprises allow the use of HTTP, instead of requiring HTTPS, while 83% had ATS disabled for all network connections and 26% had ATS disabled at a global level, with specific exceptions set up for domains.

According to Appthority, existing apps that do not comply with the ATS mandate will not be removed from the App Store, which means enterprises will have to continue to be vigilant about apps in their environments. Read more about the report here.

Source: Apps Tech News