Freedom’s not just another word for nothing left to lose. Strong security ensures your ability to conduct your business unhampered. Mac OS X delivers the highest level of security through the adoption of industry standards, open software development and wise architectural decisions. Combined, this intelligent design prevents the swarms of viruses and spyware that plague PCs these days.

Secure Default Configuration

Apple’s conservative approach to security protects your Mac from attacks over private or public networks, such as the Internet, right out of the box. All the communication ports are closed and all native services — personal file sharing, Windows file sharing, personal web sharing, remote login, FTP access, remote Apple events and printer sharing — are turned off by default. The Mac OS X administrator account, unlike the Windows admin account, disables access to the core functions of the operating system. Many people find that Windows-based PCs are unusable unless they use the admin account, which exposes their PCs to attack. The Mac OS X default configuration, in contrast, guards against shady characters who could so easily take control of your system.

Personal Firewall

All that spam on the Internet these days gets sent by “owned” boxes, usually Windows-based home computers. Cyber pirates scan for easy-to-compromise machines. Tiger’s built-in personal firewall protects your computer from unauthorized access by monitoring all incoming network traffic. When you enable the personal firewall in Mac OS X, all inbound connections are denied except for those that you explicitly permit. And now with stealth mode, your Mac won’t even acknowledge its existence to people scanning for machines to attack.

Auto Update

Mac OS X can download software updates automatically, ensuring that you stay current with the latest security patches and software releases directly from Apple. Apple digitally signs the updates, so you can be sure they come from a trusted source.

FileVault

Protect the info on your Mac from prying eyes with FileVault, which uses the latest government security standard, AES-128 encryption, to safeguard your hard work. It encrypts and decrypts on the fly, so you don’t even know it’s happening. FileVault protects all the info in your home folder from prying eyes, so your trade secrets stay secret, your holiday shopping lists are kept safe and your personal finance records remain secure.

A Secure Keychain

To make it easy to manage the daunting number of passwords and permissions intrinsic to network computing, Mac OS X includes a Keychain. The Keychain stores all your information to use encrypted disk images and to log onto file servers, FTP servers and Web servers. Mac OS X automatically adds your .Mac account information to your Keychain. When you log in to Mac OS X, the system opens your Keychain. You don’t have to enter your user name and passwords to access this data. You can set Mac OS X to lock your Keychain when the system sleeps or is inactive for a time. The system will ask you for your password the next time you try to access secure data. Other users on the system cannot access your Keychain or its data.

Permanent Deletion

Now you can completely erase sensitive files you no longer need. When you delete a file or folder, Secure Erase Trash makes sure that it no longer exists. Traditional file deleting simply removes the file name from the disk directory but leaves the file data in place. Secure Erase Trash immediately overwrites the file with erroneous data, so that the file disappears and cannot be reconstructed.

Disk Image Encryption

For high security, you can encrypt part of your hard disk through the use of a disk image. You can then email this disk image to other people who know the password. Simply open the Disk Copy utility, make a new image and set the encryption. The image will show up as a volume on your desktop. When your Keychain is locked, or when you send that disk image file to another person, the image is secure. When your Keychain is unlocked, you can copy, move and delete files as you would on any normal hard disk.

Security At the Core

Apple makes its source code available and uses time-tested open source software; the developer community examines the system’s security measures, illuminates areas of weakness, discusses and finally implements improvements to close security holes. Through this cooperation, which is inherent in open software development, Apple and the open software community can provide a more secure system and quickly respond to security issues. Apple works closely with security watchdog organizations CERT and FIRST.

Networking Security Standards

From this effort, Darwin, the open source foundation of Mac OS X, lays the groundwork for the security you demand in today’s environment. Darwin offers Kerberos, Secure Shell (OpenSSH), a framework for secure Web transactions (OpenSSL), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) data encryption over wireless networks and L2TP Virtual Private Network (VPN) for secure remote access to coporate networks.

Mac OS X keeps your data safe and your Mac secure.