Mac slack on security according to poll

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 02 May 2006 19:17

Business IT - Security

Get some relief:
Apple keeps 99c lid on music companies
A recent poll of computer users has revealed that almost half of the respondents would be prepared to take the advice Apple's senior technologists and run their Macintosh computers out of the box without a firewall or anti-virus protection installed. Recently reported remarks of Apple's senior vp of software technology, Bud Tribble, claimed that operating system Mac OSX is designed to be used without the need for firewalls or anti-virus software. However, there is growing evidence from researchers, such as Tom Ferris and The SANS Institute, that Mac OSX is becoming increasing susceptible to exploitations.

Despite the increased incidence of the discovery of MAC OSX vulnerabilities and the (hotly contested) argument that moving to the Intel platform may even incease the likelihood opf exploitations of the operating system, of the 314 repondents to an iTWire survey which posed the question: "Would you use a Mac without a firewall and anti-virus protection?", 150 (47.8%) answered yes, while 164 (52.2%) answered no.

We're tipping the discovery of a few more vulnerabilities plus some documented exploitations will soon help the Mac denialists realise that their excellent computer systems were built by humans after all.