UTC/CECA
Macintosh Security Page
11/30/99
Welcome to a page dedicated
to improving the security of your Macintosh. By nature of its design
the Macintosh is meant to be more user friendly than it is to be
secure. In fact the default installation of MacOS has almost no
security, with the exception of the File Sharing Owner password.
With the introduction of MacOS 9, multiple users can be defined with
each one having their own password. Here are some precautions that
can be taken to improve the security of your Mac.
- Get MacOS 9 - If you've
got a G3 with at least 64 Meg of RAM, you should consider buying
MacOS 9. If you have MacOS 9, use its multiple user capabilities.
The bookstore can order MacOS 9 for you at a cost of $99.
- Update your MacOS -
You you can't afford or don't have the hardware requirements for
MacOS 9, upgrade your current MacOS as much as possible. MacOS 7.5
should be patched to 7.5.5, 8.0 should be patched to 8.1, and 8.5
should go to 8.6. Slug has all of these updates for the 8.x
and 7.x families.
- Get a screensaver with
a password - I would suggest Darkside which you can get from Slug.
- Get some anti virus
software - The helpdesk has Norton AntiVirus available, click here to find out how to get it.
installed.
- Encrypt your sensitive
data - Download PGP
or TinyCypher
to secure data. Note that TinyCypher is a Mac Only application data
encrypted with can can only be decrypted by another Mac. If you own
MacOS 9, you can use the built in encryption for your files. WARNING, IF ENCRYPT YOUR DATA YOU
SHOULD UNDERSTAND THE DANGERS. Forgotten passwords and corrupt files may
render your data worthless.
- BACKUP YOUR DATA - Copy your important data files to a server, a zip disk, or even a floppy.
The cure for a crash is a good backup.