US Army adds MACs as security protection

The Army’s Apple program to bring more Macs into military facilities is being led by Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee who says it’s not just that Macs are a less inviting target than Windows; Apple’s version of Unix is inherently more secure than Windows, he says. Some observers, however, are taking issue with that assessment. One of Apple’s major marketing themes is that Macs are less susceptible to viruses, Trojans, and other hacker attacks than Windows PCs. While that argument has yet to hold much sway with enterprise I.T. departments, it is causing the U.S. Army to add some Macs to its networks. Lt. Col. C.J. Wallington, a division chief in the Army’s office of enterprise information systems, told Forbes that the Army is adding Macs to make its networks harder to hack. Wallington said that making networks more heterogeneous might make it more difficult for attackers to compromise an entire group of computers.
One key barrier — besides Apple’s price premium and the general I.T. resistance to Apple — has been incompatibility with Common Access Cards, a security key card program the military uses heavily. Early in 2008, the Army will adopt software that will allow Macs to use CACs. At least one security expert isn’t all that impressed with the Mac as a battle-hardened OS. Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators said Apple had to patch security flaws five times as much as Microsoft. “I love my Macs, but in terms of security, they’re behind the curve, compared to Windows,” Miller told Forbes. Miller added that the Army needs a better security strategy than just adding Macs to the mix. He said attackers will just target whichever platform is weaker, which might just be the Macs that are supposedly more secure