<p>Moving rather late to set to rest fears that confidential customer data from its handsets are stored in servers based in China, telecom company Xiaomi said on Monday that it plans to launch a local data centre in India next year to store data of its Indian users and ensure “peace of mind”.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Manu Jain, India Operations Head, Xiaomi, said that the Beijing-based company is presently moving its Indian user data to servers outside of China, and to India in 2015.<br />“Since early 2014, we have been migrating our services and corresponding data for Indian users from our Beijing data centres to Amazon AWS data centres in Singapore and USA. Parts of this migration will be completed by the end of October, and all of it will be completed by the end of 2014,” Jain said.<br /><br />“There have been reports about an IAF circular claiming that Xiaomi phones are a security threat. We believe this advisory was issued based on events about three months back. While we are attempting to reach Indian authorities to learn specifics, we would like to clarify a few points to assure our users that we treat your privacy seriously,” Manu Jain, India Operations Head, Xiaomi, said.<br /><br />Security software<br /><br />He said that the IAF circular followed a test done on the company’s smartphone Redmi 1S by security software firm F-Secure in July 2014 about the activation of Xiaomi’s Cloud Messaging service.<br /><br />“We immediately addressed the concerns raised, which was directly acknowledged by F-Secure 4 days later,” Jain claimed.<br /><br />He said the company has been taking rigorous precautions to ensure that all data is secured when uploaded to Xiaomi servers and not stored beyond the time required, adding that no single person, including Xiaomi employees can decrypt user data stored in Xiaomi’s cloud service, which the company refers to as ‘Mi Cloud’.<br /><br />“We have been using very high encryption and security standards to protect user data. We encrypt data using AES-128 standard before storing, which makes it practically impossible for anyone to steal this information,” Jain said.<br /><br />He clarified that Xiaomi has been providing secure Internet services free of charge, which requires personal data to be stored on the cloud. These services are optional and users can turn them on and off at any time, he added. <br /><br />“We do not collect any data associated with services such as Mi Cloud and Cloud Messaging (offered by Xiaomi) until the user provides explicit consent by turning on the corresponding service. Even after users have turned on these services, they can turn them off at any point of time,” Jain said.<br /></p>
<p>Moving rather late to set to rest fears that confidential customer data from its handsets are stored in servers based in China, telecom company Xiaomi said on Monday that it plans to launch a local data centre in India next year to store data of its Indian users and ensure “peace of mind”.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Manu Jain, India Operations Head, Xiaomi, said that the Beijing-based company is presently moving its Indian user data to servers outside of China, and to India in 2015.<br />“Since early 2014, we have been migrating our services and corresponding data for Indian users from our Beijing data centres to Amazon AWS data centres in Singapore and USA. Parts of this migration will be completed by the end of October, and all of it will be completed by the end of 2014,” Jain said.<br /><br />“There have been reports about an IAF circular claiming that Xiaomi phones are a security threat. We believe this advisory was issued based on events about three months back. While we are attempting to reach Indian authorities to learn specifics, we would like to clarify a few points to assure our users that we treat your privacy seriously,” Manu Jain, India Operations Head, Xiaomi, said.<br /><br />Security software<br /><br />He said that the IAF circular followed a test done on the company’s smartphone Redmi 1S by security software firm F-Secure in July 2014 about the activation of Xiaomi’s Cloud Messaging service.<br /><br />“We immediately addressed the concerns raised, which was directly acknowledged by F-Secure 4 days later,” Jain claimed.<br /><br />He said the company has been taking rigorous precautions to ensure that all data is secured when uploaded to Xiaomi servers and not stored beyond the time required, adding that no single person, including Xiaomi employees can decrypt user data stored in Xiaomi’s cloud service, which the company refers to as ‘Mi Cloud’.<br /><br />“We have been using very high encryption and security standards to protect user data. We encrypt data using AES-128 standard before storing, which makes it practically impossible for anyone to steal this information,” Jain said.<br /><br />He clarified that Xiaomi has been providing secure Internet services free of charge, which requires personal data to be stored on the cloud. These services are optional and users can turn them on and off at any time, he added. <br /><br />“We do not collect any data associated with services such as Mi Cloud and Cloud Messaging (offered by Xiaomi) until the user provides explicit consent by turning on the corresponding service. Even after users have turned on these services, they can turn them off at any point of time,” Jain said.<br /></p>
