In this article, I will cover applications that can help make your Mac more secure.

Many people think like this:

1. Macs run FreeBSD (linux) under the hood and linux is supposed to be more secure than Windows
2. Macs don’t really get viruses like PCs

“…Apple now lags behind Microsoft’s latest software in implementing library randomization, data-execution protection, and other advanced security features” - MacWorld October 2008



Firewalls

Firewalls monitor network traffic passing through it, and denies or permits passage based on a set of rules. Mac OS X comes with two firewalls, socket-filter and ipfw (packet-filtering). The socket-filter is an application firewall. The ipfw is a network firewall.

The network firewall can deny access to local or remote ftp server while the application firewall can deny connections to remote ftp servers using Fetch, but allow connections from Cyberduck or other ftp clients.

Hanynet has two open source applications that assist in enabling and configuring the ipfw firewall:

• WaterRoof 2.1 (for experienced network administrators)
• NoobProof 1.1a (great for the average Mac user)

Virus Protection

“By buying a Mac, you have already made the first and best toward keeping malware off your computer”, says security experts.

Apple computers are not immune to viruses and other malware, but they have been remarkably free of those annoyances for most of their existence. Despite this, a virus protection application is highly recommended. There will always be people around trying to exploit bugs, system vulnerabilities, and lax users.

ClamXav is an open source anti-virus application that provides several layers of protection for your computer. It was specifically designed for email scanning, but it provides other utilities for scanning and anti-phishing.

Privacy

Threats to your privacy can happen in two ways: physical loss or electronic snooping.

If your computer (particularly a laptop) is stolen, all of your files can be examined and used for malicious intent. Crafty thieves can use small pieces of data and gain potentially damaging information.

Criminals don’t always need physical access to your computer to access your computer and do harm. They can intercept your network traffic and find harmful information such as passwords and account numbers.

Mac OS X has some built-in features to help protect your privacy.

The Mac OS X FileVault is used to encrypt and protect the user folder. You should also encrypt your virtual memory by checking the “Use secure virtual memory” box on the General tab. This will protect memory used by your computer while you are using it.

The open source application TrueCrypt ( Leopard : Tiger) uses encrypted volumes to protect your files on the fly without user intervention. It also allows files to be copied to and from the encrypted volumes just like they are copied to and from normal disks.

A couple of other security measures can be taken to increase your privacy during communications.

iChat can be setup to encrypt your data if you are a MobileMe member. On the security tab in iChat preferences, check the box “iChat encryption is enabled” for the account that should be encrypted.

For your email, you can use Mac GPG. It requires several other third party packages so it takes a little more effort to get up and running. It can provide encryption for emails and other messages.

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