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U.S. Army Acquires More Macs To Enhance Cybersecurity

Friday December 21, 2007 3:01 pm PST by longofest
The U.S. Army believes that diversifying its computing platforms, in part by integrating more Macs, will make it more secure against cyberattacks like the ones that occurred over the summer to the Pentagon and a number of defense contractors.

According to Forbes, the Army has quietly begun to integrate Macs into its systems. While Macs currently only make up around 20,000 of the Army's 700,000 computers, Macs are currently entering the Army at a rate of approximately 2,000 per year.

The previous barriers to Apples entering the Army have recently been overcome by Common Access Card (CAC) software development efforts by a Texas developer (CAC's are used extensively by the military) and security concerns outweighing cost concerns.

"A leaked deployment order, for instance, might reveal the path of a supply truck and the points where it could be sabotaged [...] This is information that affects the lives of soldiers and the civilians we're trying protect [...] It has to be safeguarded."


Every now and then questions rise about the security of Mac OS X. Earlier this year was the Month of Apple Bugs, and just this week was an article claiming that Mac OS X had 5 times more flaws than Windows over the past year. However, developments like this seem to indicate that Apple's security reputation remains positive amongst IT professionals.

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