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Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 4:50am | Edit Note | Delete
30 Simple Steps to Secure Your Mac
1. File Sharing - Make sure you're not unwittingly ''sharing'' your files
2. Bluetooth - Make sure your Bluetooth isn't on and that it's not broadcasting.
A. Deselect ''Discoverable''
B. Deselect ''On"
C. Deselect ''Show status in menu bar''
- System Preferences > Bluetooth > Advanced
A. Deselect "Bluetooth-PDA-Sync"
3. Security - Make sure your basic settings don't allow for unexpected local or
remote login and also that your firewall is turned on securely.
A. There are two selectable choices across the open dialog box. Select the option
on the right: "Power Adapter"
B. The uppermost selection is Graphics. Select "Higher performance".
C. Move your mouse downward about 2 inches and deselect both: 1) "Wake for
Ethernet network administrator access"; & 2) "Restart automatically after a power
failure".
D. Move your mouse downward again. This time about an inch to select "Show battery
status in the menu bar".
5. Accounts - Make sure you deactivate the "Guest Account", create a more secure
Standard user account for yourself (you'll then have 2), and secure the login
process
A. Click on "Guest Account" in the leftmost pane. This panes heading reads "My
Account".
B. There are 3 choices. Make sure they are each deselected: 1) "Allow guests to
log into this computer"; 2) "Enable Parental Controls"; & 3) "Allow guests to
connect to shared folders"
C. Located at the bottom of your Accounts dialog box, in the lower leftmost
corner, you will see a selectable rectangular dialog button with a little house
icon on it. Depress this "Login Options" button.
D. The primary pane will change and you will be presented with more choices i.
Starting from the top, option: "Automatic login:" set this to "Disabled"
ii. Move your mouse to the option immediately below. It is labelled "Display login
window as:"
iii. Depress "Name and password"
iv. Deselect each of the 5 remaining options so that not one is enabled:
a. "Show the Restart, Sleep, and Shut Down buttons
b. "Show Input menu in login window
c. "Show passwords hints"
d. "Use VoiceOver at login window"
e. "Enable fast user switching"
E. Move your mouse to the lower left corner again and click the "+" button to
create an additional account - a "Standard" user account
i. A drop-down dialog box will again appear. You will see 6 labeled parameters.
The uppermost will read "New Account"
ii. Depress the selection dialog to the immediate right of the New Account label
and chose "Standard"
iii. Enter names in the spaces reserved for "Name" and "Short Name"
iv. For "Password:", depress the key icon and bring up the "Password Assistant".
Follow the steps you took above at 3.B.v.
v. Leave "Password Hint:" blank
vi. Lastly, select "Turn on FileVault" for this account
6. Keyboard & Mouse - Prevent Bluetooth devices from Waking the computer
A. There is a row of selectable icons across the top of "Keyboard & Mouse" dialog
box. Select the middle button: "Bluetooth"
B. Move your mouse downward about 4 inches and deselect "Allow Bluetooth devices
to wake this computer"
7. CDs & DVDs - Prevent users from loading unauthorized media on your computer via
your optical drive
A. Set each of the following to "Ignore". You will still see an icon on your
desktop for DVDs and CDs inserted into your drive, as always. However, a Finder
window will not appear and code won't be auto-run.
8. Eposé - Prevent users from deactivating your screen saver without entering your
password
A. This dialog box has two stacked sections. The uppermost allows you to set an
option that will produce a result when you move your mouse pointer to the
specified corner.
B. Make sure not one of the four selections is set to "Disable Screen Saver"
A. Depress "Input" and in the top of the resultant dialog box you will see the
heading "Choose a device for sound input"
B. Depress "Internal microphone" and reduce the "Input volume" to as low as
possible; move the slider all the way to the left.
C. Depress "Line In", located immediately below, follow the steps you just took in
step B; move the slider all the way to the left.
10. QuickTime - Take control of QuickTime so that it does not auto-run potentially
bad code or store it in your system's cache memory
A. On the top of this system pane, you'll see a row of buttons. Depress "Browser"
and deselect "Play movies automatically" and "Save movies in disk cache"
B. Now depress streaming, located two cells to the right of "Browser", and
deselect "Enable Instant-On"
A. There are two panes in the Network dialog box. In the left pane you will see
"Bluetooth", "Ethernet", "AirPort", and "FireWire".
B. Click on FireWire and then move the mouse downward about 2 inches to the small
wheel icon above the padlock and to the right of the "+" and "-" signs.
C. A drop-down dialog box will appear. Select "Make Service Inactive"
D. Do the same for Bluetooth.
E. Usually, you will use either Ethernet or AirPort to access the Internet. To be
safe, only enable the services you will use and disable them when not in use.
12. Speech - Ensure no one can give your computer commands via its voice
recognition capabilities
A. In this dialog box there are two panes, one within the other.
B. In the top row of the inner pane, there are two buttons: 1) "Settings"; & 2)
"Commands". Depress Settings and set "Microphone:" to "Line In".
C. Set "Listening Method:" to "Listen only while key is pressed.
D. Now, once again return to the top row of the inner pane and depress "Commands"
E. You will see a small dialog box appear within the smaller of the two dialog
boxes before you. Deselect each "command set." so that not one is left on.
13. Universal Access - Ensure access is not enabled for foreign and unauthorized
devices
A. Select the bottom option "Show Universal Access status in the menu bar". This
icon will visibly darken to bring any unauthorized connectivity to your attention.
B. Deselect "Enable access for assistive devices"
C. The top row of this pane shows 4 buttons. The first button, on the leftmost
side, is "Seeing". Click this and ensure "VoiceOver:" and "Zoom:" are set to
"Off."
D. Click the "Keyboard" button, located second from the right and ensure that
"Sticky Keys:" and "Slow Keys:" are set to "Off"
E. Select "Mouse & Trackpad" and ensure the uppermost option, "Mouse Keys:", is
set to "Off."
14. Finder - Ensure that you are are deleting files securely, not just removing
file names from the directory tree, and that you are aware of any connected
servers
A. Ensure that you see "Finder" in the uppermost left corner, to the immediate
right of the small apple icon.
B. Click "Finder" so that the appropriate drop-down menu appears. Move down to
increments to select "Preferences..."
C. A dialog box will appear. Click "General". Select "Connected servers" under
"Show these items on the Desktop:"
D. Click "Sidebar" and ensure that every icon/option is selected. The objective is
to bring to light any and all networked devices.
E. Click "Advanced" and make sure that the top four options are selected,
specifically "Empty Trash securely" and "Show all file extensions"