Kurt Saenger-Heyl has never had a virus on either of the Macs he has owned.
“I’ve been using Mac for three years; [the lack of viruses] is one of the perks,” Saenger- Heyl, a freshman in computer engineering, said. “I’ve never had any problems. I didn’t have any anti-virus [software] on my old Mac and didn’t have any problems with that either.”
Saenger-Heyl currently has a Mac with Trend Micro, anti-virus software offered by the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
Macs are less susceptible to viruses than Windows, according to staff members of (OIT). However, OIT requires anti-virus software for all computers that access the campus network, including both Macs and PCs, because Macs are not completely immune.
There are a number of reasons why Macs tend to be safer, including the base code of Mac OSX, Apple’s smaller market share, and the fact that most businesspeople use PCs.
“[Mac OSX] was based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) distribution of Linux,” said John L. Baines, assistant director of the OIT security standards and compliance team. “BSD certainly has a very high reputation for security features in general, so OSX has a good pedigree.”
According to Baines, there are fewer viruses in existence that can affect Macs because they are not as widely used.
“Most viruses today are criminal in intent, and look to find a way to seal your identity money, or computer resources, sometimes by generating SPAM,” Baines said. “So anyone writing a virus will want to look where the money is, and where they can infect the largest number of computers for the least amount of work.”
Yet another factor to consider, Baines said, is that Microsoft has improved its Windows operating system in recent years.
“Since Windows XP SP2, Microsoft has had a strong focus on security, and has really shown the rest of the world how to organize patch fix distribution,” Baines said. “Apple has been much more secretive about vulnerabilities found in their code, and does not seem to have the patching as well organized as Microsoft.”
As Windows becomes harder to crack, hackers will look to other venues for vulnerabilities, such as third party software programs capable of running on either operating system, according to Baines.
“As an IT professional I have seen security threats on everything from a calculator to a mainframe, but to be honest, I can count the number I have seen for Mac OSX on one hand,” said Everette Allen, a systems programmer and the University’s OIT Macintosh support specialist.
Allen designed the Mac hard-drive image used for most Macintosh computers the University owns.
“We need to realize it only takes one successful security threat to cause problems,” Allen said. “This is the reason why OIT buys and provides, at no cost, anti-virus software for Mac OS and other operating systems to the campus community.”
Besides the threat of viruses, Allen said “not to forget that using any computer in today’s Internet environment has even larger threats like identity theft, phishing and much more.”
Allen encourages students to learn about staying safe from computer security threats for any operating system by going to oit.ncsu.edu/safe-computing, where OIT offers all students free anti-virus software for both Mac and PC.
“I strongly recommend running anti-virus software on all computers including those running Mac OS X,” Allen said.”Because it only takes one security threat to cause problems.”
Civil engineering sophomore Jennifer Price doesn’t have anti-virus software for her Apple operating system, Mac OSX, but does have it for her Windows 7, both of which dualboot on her Macbook.
“Macs usually don’t get viruses. I didn’t see a reason [for anti-virus],” Price said.
Price said one of the disadvantages to Macs, however, is that most of the engineering programs run on Windows.
Devin Bueker, a senior in psychology, said she didn’t know OIT offered Mac anti-virus software. “I got my Mac knowing it wasn’t immune to viruses, but I did know it was less prone.”
