Macintosh “security” reputation takes a harsh turn at Computer Protection News

Macintosh “security” reputation takes a harsh turn

Published November 2nd, 2006 in Malware

While this news archive primarily focuses on security related towards Windows operating systems, we thought this would be an appropriate article to show here regarding Mac’s. There has lately been a campaign to state that Macintosh’s are far more secure than Windows, but could this be a downfall for Apple?

The fact of the matter is that despite Apple’s work to maintain the image of Macs as secure devices, researchers are concentrating much more heavily on finding underlying security vulnerabilities in Mac software. As a result, we are seeing security patches for Apple software now on a regular basis.

Macintosh operating systems, specifically Mac OS X, have a reputation of being very secure, much more so than Windows XP.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) touts that frequently and openly in its advertisements and television commercials. Is this reputation deserved? Frankly, yes, but with a big caveat — the situation is changing.

The Danger of Popularity

Mac OS X is built on what is considered to be one of the more secure Unix-based operating systems, BSD. However, that’s not the only reason Macs have had a reputation of being more secure.

Windows has the dominant market share, which gives attackers the largest number of targets to saturate when attacking networks — and let’s face it, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has done a poor job in the past of building a secure operating system, browser and applications. This has changed significantly with the well accepted “patch Tuesday” process and a concentrated focus by Microsoft to improve Windows XP and the upcoming Windows Vista release.

This has created a false sense of security for Mac OS X users, though. While the Mac operating system is more secure than PC operating systems at this point in time, that doesn’t mean Macs are immune. Overconfident Mac users may find themselves unprepared when a worm or exploit does hit.

Read the rest HERE.

We say it time and time again. It is impossible for anything to be 100% secure. To do otherwise is just asking for trouble. Tell all of your Mac friends out there!