Apple does well but Microsoft does better with enterprise security

While still not great, the operating systems behind Apple desktops, laptops and phones are getting more secure, researchers at Black Hat  say.

While not recommended for corporate use unless it’s in islands within larger networks, the OSX operating system has made strides, says Alex Stamos, who lead a team of researchers from iSec Partners that researched the OSX and Windows 7 operating systems. Their conclusion is that Apple does pretty well, but Microsoft wins. Even so, earlier versions of Apple’s software were more vulnerable to initial exploitation than Win 7, but the latest Apple version known as Lion makes up ground.

Escalating privileges remains a problem on both operating systems, he says, with OS X having more potential soft spots than Win 7. But when it comes to network vulnerabilities, Apple is the loser. “OSX networks are significantly more vulnerable to network privilege escalation,” he says. “Almost every OSX server service offers weak or broken authentication mechanisms.”