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Army Buys Macs to Beef Up Security
agent_blue writes "The Army is integrating Macs into their IT network to thwart hack attempts. The Mac platform, they argue, is more secure because there are fewer attacks against OS X than Windows-based systems. 'Military procurement has long been driven by cost and availability of additional software--two measures where Macintosh computers have typically come up short against Windows-based PCs. Then there have been subtle but important barriers: For instance, Macintosh computers have long been incompatible with a security keycard-reading system known as Common Access Cards system, or CAC, which is heavily used by the military. The Army's Apple program, created [in 2005], is working to change that.'"
Dude, that was hilarious. Thank you for brightening my day just a little bit more.
... because the total cost of hardware ownership in the military wasn't high enough already.
Gimme 20,000 big Macs and double the beef!
Nic
The worst part about this all is that there are usually just about as many vulnerabilities affecting Apple's platform as there are vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft's platform for any period of time. I invite you to review a few pages and look at the volume by date range.
One day someone will actually do diligence before proclaiming the "Macs are more secure" line of propaganda/conventional wisdom. Or then again, maybe not. Maybe we'll just have to wait for the first occasion where someone actually cares to mass-exploit one of these vulnerabilities and Mac users everywhere suddenly realize that their systems are infected, that they have infected their friends systems, that they have no anti-virus, and that they have to take their computers back to the Apple store for repairs.