I’m slightly surprised to realize it’s almost exactly a month since I blogged here, but I was travelling for a lot of that time (a slightly confusing mixture of work and vacation). Still, I’m pleased to see that an email conversation I had with Esther Shein about OS X, security, the universe (and thanks for all the phish) has made its way onto the Infosecurity site today. In Welcoming Apple to the Malware Party, she also talks to such luminaries as Steve Santorelli and Charlie Miller about “the myth that the Mac OS X is still immune to today’s malware threats”. As one of my colleagues described it, “an in-depth article with multiple viewpoints”…
Curiously, despite my affiliations with the anti-virus industry, I seem to have come across the guy with the most relaxed views on whether Mac users should use security software. Ironically, perhaps, at a time when the media and the wider security industry seem to be queuing up to claim that nobody needs anti-virus software.
I think it’s a matter of context: while I did say that “Numerically, Mac malware is no big deal, though if it’s your system that’s compromised, one infection is too many,” I also don’t think that a reasonably careful Mac user is exposed to anything like the same levels of risk at present that Windows users are. Nonetheless all my own OS X systems run an up-to-date security suite, even though I’d like to think that I’m savvier about Mac malware than most.