[colburnmh]

Data in iCloud is going to be encrypted by the host provider in-transit and at rest. That is not the same as being encrypted at the source by Apple. It means that Google, Amazon, Azure (and whatever other platforms Apple uses for iCloud storage) will be doing that encryption with keys that they have for Apple. All the major vendors have storage encryption both in-transit and at rest. I suspect that it would be a requirement from Apple for any future vendor, too.

It does mean that the data is not sitting in clear-text form on the provider's disks. But the exact details of that encryption may vary from provider to provider.