I noticed that NIST recently published the Draft Special Publication 800-179: Guide to Securing Apple OS X 10.10 Systems for IT Professionals. I’m looking forward to reading it. The public comment period is June 23 through August 15th, 2016. The authors are careful to note that the recommendations only apply to 10.10, Yosemite. (System Integrity Protection,…
Category: Security
Posts about information security
While I’ve kept Flash updated religiously over the years, last month I finally reached the point where the plugin was adversely impacting my Mac Pro’s performance. So I uninstalled Flash. This rectified the stutters and I eliminated one of the Mac’s most vulnerability-plagued pieces of software. Here’s a list of vulnerabilities that have been discovered in Flash…
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iCloud Keychain vs. 1Password
There are several password manager products available for the Mac and iOS. In this post, I’ll focus on iCloud Keychain (free) and 1Password 5 ($49.99 for the Mac app). There are other popular options, such as LastPass and Dashlane, which store your passwords in the cloud. While it’s theoretically safe to store your data encrypted in the cloud,…
I started using Little Snitch (version 3.5.1) a couple of weeks ago. It’s software firewall for the Mac, with a primary focus on outbound connections. This is also known as a reverse firewall. There are many thorough reviews of Little Snitch available on the web, so I’ll just add my impressions: This is not a…
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PingFederate Consulting
MacMaven Consulting offers PingFederate architecture, installation, and support services. In the first part of our SSO series, I explained what SSO is, and the special flavor of SSO called federation. In this post, I’ll give a brief introduction to PingFederate. PingFederate, a product of Ping Identity, is one of the most popular enterprise solutions for…
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SiteMinder Consulting
MacMaven Consulting offers SiteMinder architecture, installation, integration, development, and support services in the New York City area. Introduction to SSO Many large corporations have turned to off-the-shelf software for handling their SSO (single sign-on) needs. You have experienced SSO on web sites, even if you haven’t noticed it. SSO is used to jump from one…
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Secure email
Generally speaking, sending an email over the internet is not secure. The message can be intercepted or even modified before it reaches the recipient. There are several technologies that can be used to provide point-to-point security. Two good options on the Mac are S/MIME, which is built into Mail.app, and Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG). GPG…
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Apple ID two-step verification
Apple recently added two-step verification to Apple IDs. This optional feature helps thwart hackers from using your Apple ID. This mechanism requires you to enter a four digit code after entering your usual password. The code is delivered to your iOS devices or your cell phone. In most cases, a hacker won’t have access to…
iCloud is a fantastic service for synchronizing photos, documents, notes and more between your Macs and IOS devices. But before your personal data can be pushed to your devices, the content has to be stored somewhere. In the case of iCloud, your data is stored on Apple’s servers. So should you feel confident that your…