Do OSX Users Need Anti-Virus Products?

 Computing, Security  No Responses »
Aug 192011
 

Revised answer: Yes

The longer answer gets a bit more involved. First of all, there is some level of protection built into OSX against malware called File Quarantine. There are limits to how much protection this provides compared with PC anti-virus and anti-malware products as it protects against known malware at the point where the malware is installed or run.

It is also limited by the frequency at which the OSX operating system is updated – OSX is typically updated once a week – unless you put off applying updates whereas a PC-style anti-virus product will typically update it’s virus definitions on an hourly basis. This would seem to make it totally inadequate, but OSX just doesn’t have as much malware as Windows.

There are a number of possible reasons for this including that OSX is inherently more secure and that OSX just doesn’t have enough of a market share for malware authors to bother with. The truth behind the lack of malware for OSX is only known to the malware authors, although it should be noted that OSX viruses do exist (as do Linux ones).

You could take the attitude that a flood of OSX malware is due any day now, and insist on running an anti-virus product in addition to the inbuilt protection OSX has. There are of course people warning that the flood of OSX malware is just around the corner, although they tend to be people connected to the anti-virus industry so are perhaps less than totally disinterested.

Of course if you have some seriously private data to protect, you should probably consider it. But most of us don’t work for the intelligence services, so can be a little less protected … for now. This of course can all change next month, next year, or sometime, so don’t take the word of this blog entry seriously especially if the date on it is a long time ago!

Of course now some time has passed, the situation has changed (with Flashback amongst others), so the answer is that yes you do need an anti-virus product. It is true that Apple has some built-in protection against Malware, but Apple is not an AV company and so they may well react too slowly to protect you.

HP To Stop Making PCs? Is This Wise?

 Computing  No Responses »
Aug 192011
 

According to the site where I usually get my news, there are two articles today … one reporting on HP supposedly spinning off the PC business, and another reporting on Lenovo’s bosses patting themselves on their back for buying IBM’s PC business a few years ago. The interesting thing about these two stories is that HP may be making the same mistake that IBM has previously made.

It may not appear at first glance to be a mistake – IBM and now perhaps HP are ditching a very low margin business because their core area of profitability is in business software and services with much higher margins. But is it a sensible decision ?

One of the advantages of selling pieces of tin that ordinary people have a chance of encountering when they are looking for a new desktop PC or laptop, is that your name is “out there”. Ordinary people will know your name, and know what business you are in – just the kind of publicity that an obscure company selling business software would love – how many people in the street know who Oracle are ? Or Autonomy ?

Operating System Patches As Preventative Maintenance

 Computing, Security  No Responses »
Aug 132011
 

It is often the case that people are reluctant to apply operating system patches to servers for two core reasons :-

  1. Applying patches often means an interruption to service, and arranging an appropriate outage can sometimes be difficult.
  2. There is a risk in applying patches that they may break something that previously worked.

Both concerns are legitimate, but what is less often observed is that an unpatched server may appear to be working but to an extent is already broken – the patches are released to fix broken servers.

If we look at car maintenance, we are used to the idea that we take our cars for preventative maintenance – it is called a service. Almost everyone with a new car will routinely take it along at regular intervals for a service to reduce the risk that it will break unexpectedly. Those with older cars frequently accept that their car will unexpected break and they will have to cope with that when it occurs.

Or in other words we apply preventative maintenance to cars, deliberately taking them out of service (you can’t use a car when it is in the garage getting services) so as to exchange a scheduled period of unavailability for reducing the risk of an unexpected unavailability.

It should be the same for operating system patches.

London Riots

 Politics  1 Response »
Aug 082011
 

On the third night of rioting in London, the most immediate reaction of every sensible person is to condem the violence as mindless thuggery. Or more cynically, not quite mindless thuggery designed to allow those who are so inclined to loot shops.

Which is quite right of course. Nothing excuses this sort of violence.

The interesting thing about the reactions of politicians is that the right-wing politicians do nothing more than condem the violence, whereas the left-wing politicians in addition to condemning the violence, also point out the economic situation is leading to a generation of young people who are frustrated with their situation who see no hope of a normal life. Or in other words right wingers are content with a simple minded answer, whereas the left-wingers are at least trying to look a little deeper.

That doesn’t excuse rioting of course, and you’ll find that most young people weren’t rioting. Not even most of the most deprived young people. The rioters themselves, would in normal circumstances be kept busy with paying jobs giving them enough money to entertain themselves without rioting.

With the present economy, there are too many young people who have no job, see no chance of getting a job, and see the government cuts take away opportunities for education which may in the end lead to a job. And in a city like London where every young person can see the incredibly wealthy around, must lead to incredible frustration.

Of course doing anything to make the rioter’s lives easier is something that grates. But what about making the lives of all the young people who didn’t riot better ?

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