Security Settings

[DiNozzo]

Hello,

I have had my new iMac for about one week now, and I could not be happier. I have used only Windows PCs up until now.

I am still trying to get accustomed to OSX, and particularly the security settings for my network. I have an Airport Extreme Base Station. Besides turning on the firewall in OSX, what other steps should I take to maximize security? What about with the Base Station?

I remember, on my PC, I used to be non-pingable with the Linksys router, but now I seem to be pingable. Is this a potential security risk?

Thank you!

 

[SC68Cal]

1) Create encrpytion key for wireless network
2) Change administrator password for base station
3) Create a standard user account on your iMac and use that for your day to day tasks. Use admin account only for installing software and computer maintenance tasks.
4) Turn off sharing features that you aren't using in the Control Panel.

 

[aliquis-]

Pingable isn't much of a security risk, people can send you lots of pings and the machine will answer on lots of them and it might use up all your bandwidth but OS X might ignore large pings or pings when it comes in a massive amount, and if someone want to DDoS you they will probably manage to knock you out for the Internet anyway..

Also when you close ports (I don't know what and if the macs got anything open) the machine can either send back a package which tells the other machine that this port is closed. But then the other machine notice that you exist and are turned on, and also you use some traffic to answer that. The other alternative is to just ignore such requests and not say anything at all.

Anyway I wouldn't care about ping (There are more ICMP packages of which echo/ping is one which people can send aswell, but your machine "should" take some of those.)

 

[FatSweatyBlldog]

3) Create a standard user account on your iMac and use that for your day to day tasks. Use admin account only for installing software and computer m

Interesting. How does this add to the online safety of the computer? To install new software/change settings, one would still need to know the admin password? I guess I can see it could be an extra layer of protection, but wondering if there was anything more to that suggestion?

Also, in the Firewall settings, if you click on the advanced tab it will give you the option to make your Mac unresponsive to ping attempts.

 

[DiNozzo]

Interesting. How does this add to the online safety of the computer? To install new software/change settings, one would still need to know the admin password? I guess I can see it could be an extra layer of protection, but wondering if there was anything more to that suggestion?

Also, in the Firewall settings, if you click on the advanced tab it will give you the option to make your Mac unresponsive to ping attempts.

Thanks for the replies. Which option would that be? Is it the stealth one?