In part one of our series, we introduced a little background information on the Mac and it’s “out of the box” security.

In this article, we will focus on some of the additional out of the box security features.

For those of you who use a laptop in the corporate world, how many of you have mistakenly been browsing through sites and accidentally stumbled onto a site that involved pornography or illegal internet activities.

Ok, well for those of you who are hiding, the fact is that almost every surfer has! Whether or not you care to admit it.

For most of us, we go okay, who cares and move on. For some – those people using corporate laptops at home for instance – you might start to panic a little as the office computer policy has a strict “no porn” guideline.

Enter Safari and Private Browsing.
Not just for the Mac, Safari – Apples Web browser provides you with the ability to enable “Private Browsing”.

Private Browsing is a helpful feature when you need to use a shared computer, such as one in a library, Internet café, or office. The advantages of private browsing are many, including:

• Web pages are not added to your History file.
• Items are automatically removed from the Downloads window.
• Information (such as names and passwords) is not saved for AutoFill.
• Searches are not added to the pop-up menu in the Google search box.

In essence, it’s browsing without an audit trail.

Unless of course, your corporate IT department has other monitoring measures in place (which they normally do – or at least should).

For those of you using other browsers, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Camino etc), All of these browsers also allow private browsing as well, but with the same simplicity of a simple tick box like Safari.

Another useful feature within the Safari browser is the “Reset Safari” option. This simple option allows you to reset Safari back to it’s default settings and remove additional history, book marks, downloads, settings and so on.

From a security perspective, allowing staff and individuals to browse using private browsing is advantageous to all, including network admins.

After all, how many network admins out there have often come across browsers that slow to a crawl due to cache issues, history issues and general low maintenance – when it comes to the web browser?

For those of you who haven’t tried Safari as a browser – or prefer to use something else, I would recommend a re-visit.

More information on Safari can be found here: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Warm Regards,
Scott Malpass
Aquafruit Media