U.S. Department of Homeland Security Standardizes on Macs

[billbuckhead]

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Standardizes on Macs

by Adam C. Engst <[e-mail]>

Cast your mind back to September of 1999, when we reported on a highly publicized move by the U.S. Army to transition its primary Web server from Windows NT to Power Macintosh G3s running WebSTAR (then from StarNine Technologies, now owned by 4D). The reason was simple: the Army's home page had been hacked and modified in embarrassing ways, and even though the FBI arrested a teenager in connection with the incident, the Army addressed the problem in part by switching away from the insecure Windows NT.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05552>

Although 1999 seems an eternity ago, some things never change, and today the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would be standardizing all of its computing functions on Macs running Mac OS X. As with the Army's decision back in 1999, the reason is security. Even though Microsoft continues to block holes in Windows, we've seen an ever-increasing number of worm and virus epidemics that have turned millions of Windows-based PCs into zombie spam generators and resulted in many billions of dollars of damage and cleanup costs.

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<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-724.html>

[physioex]

1. There are a lot of things that the government does are dumb...

But this isn't one. Yea the Mac OSX runs on a UNIX core which is more stable and less likely to be invaded by worms and viruses. They could also consider using Linux on an Intel platform, it would be cheaper than a Mac and about as good.

[billbuckhead]

2. I've heard stories the FBI is switching as well

The Bundeswehr has also quit using Windows because of security issues.

[moof]

3. Yikes now we're in trouble

those are real computers.