World’s renowned anti-virus software company, Sophos, just proclaimed that Mac is definitely not a virus free solution as platform. The people at Sophos opine that Windows, if configured appropriately, may boast of a highly secure platform just like the Linux. Dr Jan Hruska, who is one of the co-owners of Sophos, spoke to the media persons from “silicon.com” (sister site ZDNet Australia) in this regard too, he commented that Mac is strictly not a virus-free platform.
He also added that:
“They are available and they are moving around - it is not as though the Mac is in some miraculous way a virus-free environment.The fact that most people do use PCs means you certainly do hear more about those attacks. It gives a false impression that somehow Apple Macs are all virus free.”
As we are aware, the “Open office Macro-virus” is skilled enough to infect Windows, linux and Mac. The co-founder’s opinions came in few weeks after the discovery of this deadly “viral software”. Their counterparts, Symantec antivirus, also made public that system users who work on OpenOffice should be cautious enough while handling the same. The well known PC antivirus expert, Hruska, made this clear too that Windows is as safe as any other popular Operating System. According to him Windows should be handled properly and thus carefully analysing the OS’s security system software.
He opined that:
“It is important to realise that there is no magic in Linux from a virus point of view. It is really the question of how that security is deployed. He judged that Windows and Linux serve different purposes when they are put into deployment by the users.”
Hruska explained that Windows and Linux have been used for different purposes and thus, according to him, this has considerably influenced their security record: “On Microsoft operating systems, which were traditionally used on the endpoint, everybody ran as an administrator, which meant that if the operating system has security built in, it is simply not used. Linux came from the server world and in those deployments there was a great deal of effort put in separating users and making sure users do not run as administrator. It is really from the point of view of usage that security on Linux is probably used more than security on single user operating systems like XP and Vista.”
The most proficient industry analyst at IBRS,James Turner, also threw some light on this topic :
“I think it’s a spurious argument to say that any of the leading operating systems is more secure than any of the others. It almost doesn’t matter what OS you’re using - it all depends on the processes and people supporting the OS. And this is without even talking about the supporting network architecture around the OS. If you want to get nitty-gritty, then using the Common Criteria listings, Windows XP is certified to EAL4+ and Apple’s OS X is only at EAL3.”
Via: Softwaresilicon
