“If you’ve ever consulted with a computer security expert and they seemed a little paranoid, consider it a good thing – paranoia is an essential component to effective security,” Aaron Weiss writes for eSecurity Planet. “Conversely, lack of paranoia is a risk factor, which is a key weakness in security for Mac computers –particularly in the enterprise.”
“It is no myth that Macs are less prone to viruses and malware. There are several good reasons for this. Part of the explanation lies in the OS design. OS X requires an administrator password to install privileged code, thereby defending against the kinds of rampant ‘drive-by’ installs of malware that plagued Windows XP and to a lesser degree Windows Vista, despite Microsoft’s efforts to implement similar controls,” Weiss writes. “The network security landscape has become considerably more complex in the decade-plus since OS X was released, however. Viruses are old news, and even most modern Windows machines are well defended against them. ‘Bad guys’ are exploiting numerous new attack vectors from which the Mac is not necessarily immune.”
Weiss writes, “Java and Flash are just two examples that illustrate a key point in modern Mac security. Either these third-party runtimes need to be kept off the machine or else a policy for keeping them up to date must be rolled into any security maintenance plan.”
Read more in the full article here.
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