Apple needs wakeup call on security
THE continuing adoption of iPads in the enterprise space has created a new weak link in security which Apple Inc continues to downplay, making organizations increasingly at risk.
“Here’s a hypothesis for you: When it comes to security, Apple has its head in the sand,” says Dr James Lyne (pic), director of technology strategy at UK-based security software company Sophos. “One of the scariest things in security at the moment is how little people recognize the actual threat on mobile devices. There’s so much hype and certainty about it that is at odds with what is really happening out there.
“I’ve spoken to many businesses, and they say, ‘but the iPad’s secure’,” he adds. There is still a prevailing perception that nobody writes viruses attacking Apple’s platforms, though that has slowly disappeared when it comes to the MacOS [on Macintosh] thanks to the Mac Defender malware, which while primitive by Windows malware standards, still infected tens of thousands Macs more than a year ago. More recently, the Flashback malware is estimated to have infected 650,000 Macs – or 2% of all Macintosh systems in the world.
