Army Adds Macs To Improve Security

[David]

newsfactor

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.

These things don't just happen overnight. The Army's CIO, Gen. Steve Boutelle, called for more diverse computer networks back in August 2005. He said the Army should deal with a broader range of vendors to increase competition and harden I.T. defenses. But thus far, the Army has allowed only a trickle of Macs to enter military facilities. The Army buys only about 1,000 Macs during its twice-a-year buying seasons.

Macs 'Shrug Off' Attacks

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.

The Army is impressed with Apple Xserve servers' ability to withstand attacks, Wallington said. "Those are some of the most-attacked computers there are. But the attacks used against them are designed for Windows-based machines, so they shrug them off," he said.

The Army's Apple program is being led by Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee. He 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.

But some observers point out that as Macs have become more popular, Apple has had to release increasingly substantial security updates. Apple's QuickTime was recently shown to suffer from fairly serious security holes. And security company F-Secure has identified over 100 Mac-specific exploits over the last two months.

Macs 'Behind the Curve'

Broskey, however, maintains that the large number of patches shows the strength of Apple's reliance on open-source software for its operating system, but that military I.T. will have to be aggressive about deploying the updates. "The Army's no different from any corporation," he was quoted by Forbes as saying.

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. "In the story of the three little pigs, did diversifying their defenses help? Not for the pig in the straw house."