Apple Mac still potential Typhoid Mary warns McAfee exec

Stan Beer
Sunday, 09 April 2006 10:49

Business IT - Security

“Ultimately, organisations need to make sure they’re secure and they have to be aware of the security issues that exist for all platforms,” said Bell. “It’s possible to secure and scan all files that are coming across to the Macintosh at the gateway. If you’re running a dual boot system, make sure you’ve got adequate security on the Windows side of that system. It’s just a matter of making sure you are security minded.”

Aside from the threat to Windows from Macintosh machines connected to the same network, threats to the Macintosh platform itself are on the rise, according to Bell. He indicated that the Macintosh world is not as responsive as it should be to potential security threats.

“The Macintoshes are starting to see more threats,” said Bell. “The overall threat level is a lot lower than the threat level for Windows users but that’s changing. In terms of vulnerabilities we see vulnerabilities on all systems out there but most do not attract exploits. For the Macintosh, there are a lot of vulnerabilities but often there are no exploits for them and eventually they get patched. But people are slow to patch them and those systems are open to attack. The people who are writing these attacks are not writing as many attacks for the Macintosh systems but that may change in the future as the Macintosh becomes more popular. In the dual boot situation, when they’re booted into the Windows system, they are just as vulnerable to attacks as is the average Windows user.”
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