What's Up Mac?

What's Up Mac?

By Bill Rose

Today as I leisurely read the news of Lindsay Lohan being handcuffed for violating her probation (again!!!), a man in Ohio literally letting Lions, Tigers and Bears go free from his exotic animal refuge before killing himself, various Republican Presidential candidates ripping each other up two tiny items caught my attention.

The first is Apple did not meet it's projected sales figures for this past quarter even though they had a 54% increase in sales and this past quarter didn't include the astronomical sales of the iPhone 4S. OK. The projections were ridiculous when you can sell 17 million iPhones in a 3 month period and show a 54% increase in overall sales right before a huge release of a new iPhone. A lot of people held off buying their iPhone waiting for the new iPhone's release. With 4 million iPhone 4S smartphones out the door 3 days after their release and the upcoming Christmas season it's fair to predict Apple will be fine for the 4th quarter and the year but it is ironic to note how the media spins what should have been amazing news into a negative.

The other piece of news I spotted was the release of the "Son of Stuxnet" virus. Apparently this variation of the infamous Stuxnet virus that supposedly attacked Iran's nuclear industry cyber infrastructure a few years ago is even more virulent. Codenamed "Duku" it creates a 36 day window into effected corporate computers where it can send data back to it's host, located somewhere in India, as a prelude to an even more serious and potentially debilitating attack by a more damaging virus.

As Mac users there is nothing we can do about these types of viruses but the article did get me to thinking about the security of my own system. Mac users have been lucky that they have not been targeted by virus or malware writers but as the popularity of the Mac and iMobile devices grow we will no longer be in the shadows safe from those who would try to crack our computers for monetary reasons or out of pure malevolence.

Sooner or later Mac users will have to trust some of their security to a third party program. Symantec, Intego, Kapersky and McAfee have or will have programs that protect your Mac from viruses and malware. Mac OS X is good at security but every OS has security flaws and OS X is no different.

Recently I upgraded my security measures on my own Mac. I always follow the common sense rules of security which are backing up data, never trusting emails as legitimate and never downloading attachments, accessing my bank and financial information through the web and not through an email link, doing software updates as soon as possible, never downloading an app except from the App Store or the software company's home site, and using hard to guess passwords. Recently I went a few steps further using iCloud and another Cloud service as remote backups and also employing 1Password on my Mac, iPhone and iPad to encrypt my passwords especially my email account which is the most vulnerable portal to your Mac.

I have no doubt my Mac is more secure now then it was six months ago but I can see a security utility in my future. The problem is all security programs scan everything and often flag legitimate files. That becomes a bore and wastes time. I am hoping a more efficient and less problematic program becomes available for the Mac. I have used McAfee products on Windows machines and it has caught some potential problem files. As pointed out before it has also flagged a lot more legitimate files than potentially damaging files and it's not proactive. Your computer can get infected by a new virus, Trojan or malware that McAfee hasn't seen yet so you have to update the software often and sometimes the cure is almost as bad as the disease if your computer does become infected.

Stay tuned...