Amazon to restore encryption support on Fire tablets after all

Amazon is planning to restore encryption feature on its Fire tablets following customers complaints about the removal of security option from Fire OS 5 update. Encryption provides additional security features to protect sensitive data of a device if it is lost or stolen.

"We will return the option for full-disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring," Robin Handaly, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. The company originally removed disk encryption support in its latest Fire operating system update that was introduced on Fire tablets in 2015 fall.

The release note for the encryption support on Fire tablets reads, "Encryption support will soon be deprecated on Fire HD (4th Generation) and Fire HDX 8.9 (4th Generation)....

"Your device has encrypted data. However, device encryption is no longer supported in Fire OS 5."

Amazon previously said it removed encryption support from the Fire OS, a forked version of Android, based on Android Open Source Project, as it was an enterprise feature, which it found was not being used by customers.

But Werner Vogels, Amazon's chief technology officer had highlighted the importance of encryption and said that no company should provide backdoor access to the device's data.

"We believe that you cannot have a connected business, or an Internet-connected business and not make security and protection of your customers your number one priority," Vogels said, "Encryption plays a very, very important role in that. To be honest, it is one of the few really strong tools we have so customers know that only they have access to their data and nobody else."