PCC is designed with several core requirements, including stateless computation on personal user data, enforceable guarantees, no privileged runtime access, non-targetability, and verifiable transparency. The system is built to ensure that user data is not leaked outside the trust boundary or retained once a request is complete. Apple plans to make software images of every production build of PCC publicly available for security research, allowing researchers to verify the security and privacy guarantees of the system.
Key takeaways:
- Apple has developed a new system called Private Cloud Compute (PCC) that extends the security and privacy of Apple devices into the cloud, ensuring that personal user data sent to PCC isn’t accessible to anyone other than the user — not even to Apple.
- PCC is built with custom Apple silicon and a hardened operating system designed for privacy, making it the most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale.
- Apple's PCC system is designed to be stateless, meaning it does not retain any user data after processing, and it has enforceable guarantees to ensure that user data cannot leak outside the system during administration.
- Apple will make software images of every production build of PCC publicly available for security research, allowing security and privacy researchers to inspect PCC software, verify its functionality, and help identify issues.