Apple's Unlikely Security Mentor: Microsoft

snydeq writes "Apple has much to learn about securing an operating system, and it could learn how from Microsoft, Roger Grimes writes in the wake of further evidence that Macs are more vulnerable to attack than Windows machines. 'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength. Apple can use the lessons learned by Microsoft to manage a quick turnaround. Apple has already hired one of Microsoft's former security leaders, Window Snyder, and it has adopted a modified form of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle programming practices. Apple has the benefit of seeing how Microsoft fixed its past mistakes.'"

Not unlikely at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Most security professionals (and even famous hackers, like pwn2own winners) today acknowledge that Microsoft security development practices are very good, and so are their latest OS. Everbody who has not devolved into pure fanboism understands that this can be the case even if they still have a higher volume of issues than Mac have for now.

Security is a *strength* for MS? Really!? Who knew

[GSloop]

'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength"

Really? A strength? Seriously?

Is that why we got the ping of death back in Vista/Win7/2008 because of a forked TCP stack?....
Because Security is a "Strength" for Microsoft?

Honestly, while security *may* be better [and I'm not sure that's true] at MS, it certainly IS NOT a strength of theirs.

If that's the view of the moron who wrote this - I'll trust everything else written with the same level of massive skepticism. [i.e. It's clear a moron wrote this - so I'll trust everything else in here just as much as I'd trust any other moron.]

Re:Meanwhile

[jimicus]

IMV, Apple products/features over the course of the last 5-8 years follow a fairly straightforward model which can be broken down into a few steps.

1. Release Not-Terribly-Shiny Version 1.0. It may not be the most sophisticated in the world, it may have a whole heap of issues. But it will be released. The rest of the world says "ho-hum". It probably won't sell spectacularly, but it won't be an abject failure. (See also: First generation iPod. First generation iPhone. OS X when first released.)
2. Release Shiny Version n+1. It fixes most of the issues of the previous version. Technologically it's unusual for it to do anything new, anything that the competition doesn't already do. But what it does it executes with so much style, so much polish that the rest of the industry is left looking rather pathetic and scrabbling to catch up. It sells spectacularly. (See also iPhone 3G)
3. Apple will rest on its laurels. There will be updates to their products, but by and large they'll be relatively minor increments rather than ground-breaking "my God that's amazing" ideas. These will be released as Shiny Version 3.0 and 4.0. (See also iPhone 3GS, OS X versions 10.3-10.4).
4. The rest of the industry will catch up. Products will appear that compete with Apple's equivalent on features, price and polish. Then, just as people are starting to seriously question Apple and wonder what they're doing...
5. Repeat steps 2-4.

If I'm right, the iPhone 5 won't be a huge breakthrough over the iPhone 4. It may have a few tweaks here and there, but it won't be "Steve, take me now!" fantastic. The iPhone 6, however, will probably be leaps and bounds ahead of the 5.

Re:At least...

[next_ghost]

Let's see... The NT family of Windows has full security infrastructure based on user accounts and access privileges. However, that security infrastructure was completely turned off by default when Microsoft decided to merge the WinDOS family into Windows XP so that you could run legacy WinDOS software and software written by idiots without any additional setup. And now, starting with Vista, we've got yet another security infrustructure built on top of the first one which is supposed to emulate access restrictions inside otherwise unrestricted administrator account. Does that sound like a sane security design to you?