Protect Your Mac Data

Here's how you can improve and control security in your Mac-enabled workplace:

IM (Instant Messaging)
Mac Servers 10.4 and beyond come with embedded iChat. Jabber protocols serve jabber services to clients with this capability. This includes Adium X on Mac OS X, Windows' Trillian, and iChat. Your remote workforce can exchange text and audio-visual files, and chat and communicate with each other in Mac OS X's Open Server Directory. This task is made simple through the Mac OS X Server Admin app. Encryption can be enabled by the creation of a 'self-signed' certificate or using providers such as Verisign or GoDaddy which encrypt traffic on IM. Do you already have an Active Directory structure underway? No worries - by binding Active Server to your Mac OS X Sever, and using Active Directory credentials, you can now IM using outbound iChat Server.

Filtering Content
Mac OS Server can manage local groups and profiles or locally in Mac OS X. System admin can disallow particular websites from being accessed, even presenting a complete list of navigable websites presented to employees. Already have Postini in place? It can be used conjoined with the Mac OS X management policy, to keep irrelevant content away from the work at hand.

Encrypt
Small businesses must have concern about encrypted security measures. OS X is able to provide security and encryption in almost every facet of the user's experience.

Top three ways to keep data safe:

File Vault - FV adds encryption to the complete profile folder and generates a disk image to the system, protected by password with AES-128bit encryption for complete security. MS Entourage & Applemail are modifyable for self-signature or commercial certificates for encrypting mail. Thawte (thawte.com) gives free certificates for individuals; others at modest rates. Coworkers can use this to send email between them as clients. Finally, for an easy and high-powered method to store email automatically, Keychain assistant stores email website credentials in a high-encryption secure area of the system. X has the ability to create a keychain for each user logging in to the system, set to lock automatically on logout and allow accessors to use storage for email passwords and other credentials securely. Apple currently offers an assistance by letting the user see a choice of password rated in order to gage its encryption level at time of selection. Further extension of the Keychain assistant is possible manually, by creating secure keychain notes or the addition of many keychains devoted to storage of passwords of a particular type, software serial numbers or personal files and other sensitive info.

Managing the Archives

You probably have an amazing amounts of email, possibly even locally-stored files. A typical 'occasional user' could become confounded by a search for a particular email or file. Spotlight, an application for PC users included in OS X 10.4. Familiarity with Google Desktop or Windows Vista built-in is considered prerequisite. Find Spotlight by name, file type, or content. Meta-data too. A boolean query, for example, "apple .xls," can be used to locate Excel spreadsheets with the name 'apple' in the document. It is also possible to extend useful plugins and other OS X downloads. See: http://www.apple.com/macosx/downloads/.