Thursday, June 14, 2012

Apple Turning Over New Leaf About Mac Security

I was surprised while watching Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote on Monday when Craig Federighi mentioned the upcoming OS X feature "Gatekeeper, to help keep your system free from malware."

As far as I'm aware, this is the first time Apple has ever acknowledged the existence of Mac malware in a keynote address.

I commented in my article over at Sophos' Naked Security blog that
"This may indicate a shift in the right direction for Apple in terms of openly recognizing the imperfections of its security. It's certainly a far cry from Apple's "Hello, I'm a Mac" television advertisements from 2006-2009, which strongly (and falsely) implied that Macs were invulnerable to infection."
(For more of my observations about security and privacy in the keynote—the good and the bad—see my full article.)

Today, Kevin McLaughlin, senior editor for CRN, observed that "Apple recently changed the wording in the 'Why You'll Love A Mac' section of its Web site, removing longstanding claims about Macs being more secure than Windows PCs."  Note the major differences (image credit CRN):



McLaughlin had thoughts very similar to mine about the seeming shift in thinking about security at Apple. Check out McLaughlin's interesting two-page article for more of his thoughts as well as insights from others in the security industry.

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