Ring is overhauling how its home security cameras protect your footage, introducing a new system called TAKE—short for “Throw Away the Key Encryption”—that will soon become the default for all users worldwide. The Amazon-owned company says TAKE is designed to lock down videos in the cloud while still allowing popular features like person and package alerts, AI-powered search, and automated video descriptions to work as usual. The rollout starts in September and applies whether or not you pay for a Ring subscription, signaling a rare case where a major smart-home platform is making a privacy-focused change for everyone at once.
Instead of traditional end-to-end encryption, TAKE focuses on controlling when the cloud ever gets a usable key in the first place. Each clip is encrypted with unique keys that rotate frequently—Ring uses different keys for every five minutes of footage—and those keys are stored in what the company describes as a secure enclave. For AI features to function, Ring temporarily checks out a copy of the relevant key from that enclave, uses it once to analyze the video, and then deletes that copy, promising it no longer retains ongoing access to the footage. According to Ring, TAKE is built on Messaging Layer Security, an open standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force originally created for secure group messaging, repurposed here to tighten control over smart-home video streams.
Ring already offered optional video end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which fully locks down footage so that only enrolled phones with a private passphrase can decrypt videos, cutting even Ring itself out of the loop. That mode adds a strong layer of security but comes with trade-offs: users lose cloud-dependent conveniences like some forms of smart alerts and sharing, which limited its adoption. TAKE effectively sits between standard cloud encryption and full E2EE, giving Ring a way to claim stronger privacy protections while preserving the AI and search features that made its ecosystem sticky in the first place.
The most controversial part of Ring’s history involves how much access law enforcement agencies had—or appeared to have—to customer footage, including through a long-running program of partnerships with local police departments and footage requests routed via its Neighbors app community. Privacy advocates have argued that this turned consumer doorbells into a sprawling surveillance network, with limited transparency about how video was shared or retained. Ring now argues that TAKE will narrow what it can hand over in response to subpoenas or warrants, since once the temporary keys are destroyed, the company says it can no longer decrypt those specific videos even if police ask later. That still leaves a window of time—up to roughly a day, according to Ring’s description of 24-hour key retention in the enclave—where footage could be accessed under legal process, but it shortens the exposure compared to traditional cloud storage models.
TAKE also lands against a backdrop of mounting legal and regulatory pressure on Ring’s security practices. The company has previously rolled out new encryption options after lawsuits and public criticism over hackers accessing cameras and allegations that internal controls on staff access to user videos were too lax. Consumer advocates have repeatedly prodded Ring owners to tighten their privacy settings, including enabling E2EE where possible and auditing what devices and accounts can view their feeds. With TAKE turned on by default, Ring is effectively baking some of those hard lessons into its baseline product rather than leaving stronger protections as a niche power-user option.
For everyday users, the practical impact is that their cameras will quietly shift to TAKE over the coming months with no extra configuration needed, while optional E2EE remains available for those willing to sacrifice some cloud conveniences for maximum lockdown. Ring says the new system will support AI features like familiar face detection, advanced object recognition, and auto-generated video summaries without leaving long-lived keys sitting around for attackers—or even Ring itself—to abuse. It does not fully resolve longstanding debates about whether networked cameras are compatible with civil liberties, but TAKE pushes the smart-home arms race a bit further toward architectures where companies have less persistent access to what your devices see, and that alone marks a notable shift in how one of the biggest players in the space talks about encryption.
