Under pressure from enterprise clients, Apple have hired cybersecurity expert and author David Rice as its director of global security. Several sources in the industry have verified that Apple have hired Rice who is due to take his position in March.

Rice is a respected name in IT security circles and he is being brought in to help with Apple security and to gain the trust of corporate CIOs. Rice graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 and then received a masters degree in information WarGare and Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He also worked as a Global Vulnerability analyst for the National Security Agency and as a Special Cryptologic officer for the Navy.

Currently Rice is the Executive Director of the Monterey Group, a strategic consulting firm and Consulting Director for Policy Reform at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. Rice is also the author of Geekonomics, a 2007 book which compares security vulnerabilities to weakened bridges and other physical real world infrastructure.

Apple felt the need for this new position to help gain the faith of corporations and government agencies who have started using the iPhone and iPad. This is a direct treat against Research In Motion, who have always been considered as the leader in these markets.

This latest new recruit follows after Apple hired the former security chief for the Mozilla Corporation, who took the role of senior security product manager.

KitGuru says: While many might dismiss Apple's efforts to get a foothold in this sector, Apple are already deploying the iPhone into more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies.

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