Now I don’t feel so worthless…

…because I’ve just read a nice write-up on my presentation last week at Infosecurity Europe, from Infosecurity Magazine.

“How secure are Apple products? It’s a matter of perception”

Of course, it’s usually nice to see one’s name in print, but even more so when the article is actually accurate. Though I hope that my contention that “There is no unequivocal need for anti-virus on every Mac” won’t cause consternation in ESET’s marketing department. 😉

After all, I did reiterate some points I’ve made elsewhere:

…there are compelling reasons why any business that has Macs should consider extending its security software coverage beyond  the vaunted “out of the box” security that Apple claims is all you need. Even more so in a multi-platform environment.

For home users, the situation may be a little less clear-cut. If you want to give anti-malware a miss at the moment because you’re too bright to fall for social engineering Trojans, you’re prepared to accept the relatively small risk in terms of volume, you aren’t worried about 0-day self-launching exploits,and so forth, be my guest. 

I would advise, though that you don’t act on the unfounded assumptions that there is no Mac malware, or that only viruses matter.

Surely Apple will have to demand an apology from me now? 😉

David Harley FBCS CITP CISSP
Mac Virus Administrator
Small Blue-Green World
AVIEN Chief Operations Officer
ESET Research Fellow & Director of Malware Intelligence

Also blogging at:
http://www.eset.com/blog
http://avien.net/blog/
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http://blogs.securiteam.com
http://blog.isc2.org/
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