Archive for category: Security

Proactive Mac Security: Santa ?

Proactive Mac Security: Santa ?

For the next stop in our journey, we’ll review that jolly ol’ soul, Santa. It’s a system for either monitoring what apps are launched and blacklisting the ones you decide are bad, or locking down a macOS computer to only run the ones you’ve whitelisted. Despite what The Register seems […]

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Stop All The Downloadin’

Stop All The Downloadin’

Just a quick one, to remind you that there are ways you can have a dialog with users about tightening security controls. We’re beating the drum about Flash dying a death, and haven’t included it in our image since the Great Analytics Fiasco of 20.0.0.235. I’m not the most tolerant […]

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Proactive Mac Security: osquery

Proactive Mac Security: osquery

There are two reputations(at least) that your faithful writer is hoping to shake: #1, I do not work for Google. #2, I am not the ‘osquery guy’. I don’t even know any C++! (I’m going to make time for this eventually, though.) However, for three events over the course of […]

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Proactive Mac Security, Introduction

Proactive Mac Security, Introduction

Let’s say your company is a place where no one works day-to-day logged in as an admin on their Mac. Everybody in this environment is also a computer expert, and therefore aren’t as prone to tomfoolery such as letting family members use their login to play Chrome games, and of […]

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Thunderstrike Need-To-Know

Thunderstrike Need-To-Know

When we heard about the ‘bootkit’ exploit branded Thunderstrike having the potential to remove all of your security controls it was pretty disturbing. Luckily Apple controls a relatively small number of models, and released a patch for several affected CPU versions, bundling it with 10.10.2 so as to lessen the number […]

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System Preferences Profiles in Mavericks (plus a Security Hole!)

System Preferences Profiles in Mavericks (plus a Security Hole!)

Profiles have become one of the most interesting components of the Apple ecosystem – both on OS X and on iOS. With their ability to easily control the functionality of the operating system, install certificates, and manage application preferences, along with their flexibility to use the same profile on desktop […]

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XProtect Changes

Apple has pushed some changes to XProtect.  Rich Trouton has the details over on his blog. Nate WalckNate is a Systems Reliability Engineer at Dropbox, Inc in San Francisco, CA. He runs afp548.com along with Sam Keeley and is one of the founding members of the ##osx-server IRC channel on […]

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FileVault Setup.app – A Local FV2 Setup App

FileVault Setup.app – A Local FV2 Setup App

As usual with all things FileVault related, Rich Trouton has the details on a new .app for setting up FileVault 2.  FileVault Setup.app is a standalone app that provides a pretty interface for end users to configure File Vault 2 with during first login.  This is a interesting way to […]

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More Java Security Updates

Oracle has released a security patch for Java 7 on OS X which can be found here and Apple has released updates for Java 6 which can be found via Software Updates.  For more details on this release, check out Oracle’s security bulletin. Nate WalckNate is a Systems Reliability Engineer at Dropbox, Inc […]

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Useful Tool: XProtect Packager

If you have decided to disable the automatic update function of XProtect, then you will need a method for deploying the configuration files yourself.  These configuration files tell XProtect what the minimum allowed version is for the given plugins.  If the version of the installed plugin is less than this […]

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