Securing and Protecting Macs

Course Overview
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. My name is Ken Mauldin, and welcome to my course on Securing and Protecting Macs. I'm a technical trainer at Fortinet, a network security company, and an author here at Pluralsight. This course is designed to help prepare you for taking the Apple Certified Associate Mac Integration exam, but it is also helpful for learning the different tools and methods that we can use to secure our Macs and help prevent data loss. In this course we're going to look at how to use different techniques to protect your Mac. Some of the major topics that we will cover include how to protect our Macs during the login process by disabling the automatic login, and requiring a password to be successfully authenticated. We'll also look at how you can protect yourself from malware by being able to install anti-virus software and XProtect. We'll look at how you can track your Mac if it's ever lost or stolen, and how to keep our operating system and apps up-to-date to help minimize the vulnerabilities that might exist. Finally, we'll look at how you can protect your data if it's going across the internet from a remote user to your corporate office using a VPN. By the end of this course you will be able to not only discuss the different ways you can use the security features of OS X and Mac OS, but you will also be able to show someone the proper tools to use for each task. Before beginning this course you should be familiar with OS X basics and how to navigate through Finder and the System Preferences. A basic knowledge of system and network security is recommended, but is not a requirement. I hope you'll join me on this journey to learn how important Mac security is with Securing and Protecting Macs course here at Pluralsight.

Getting Started
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Securing and Protecting our Macs. We contain so much information now in this digital age on our desktops, our laptops, and on our smart phones, but imagine what could happen if all of that information was compromised by somebody else. Imagine losing all of our banking information, our credit card information, something like that that we might keep stored someplace inside of our Mac. Well, that's where this course comes into play. There are many different layers of security that we can implement on our Macs. Some are built-in, some we may need to actually download and install in addition to what's already there, but the majority of what we need is already there inside of our Macs, so let's start on this journey of how we can protect our Macs and how we can secure them, so that we protect that sensitive data from others. So with that let's get started.

Password Protecting
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Password Protecting Our Macs. We use passwords consistently throughout the day. Typically we use them for things like authentication, logging into our Mac itself, but we use them for websites like banking and purchasing products online, and we use them for accessing resources, and well, it seems like even to get access into our phones that we type in maybe like a four digit code or something like that just to get access to our text messages and how we can actually call somebody or, in some cases, even play a game on our phones. So passwords are an important part of our daily lives, and protecting our Macs, well that's kind of that first layer of security when it comes to securing our Macs, is how can I protect somebody from accessing my files and my folders on my system, and that's what we want to look at in this module. So with that let's get started.

Providing Additional Access Restrictions
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching, Providing Additional Access Restrictions. Security and protecting our Macs is a very important part of our lives. There's files that we keep on our Macs all the time, even if they're simple things like photographs. Imagine what would happen if we lost all of our photos of our family and our friends or trips that we've been on. Imagine how devastating something like that could be to you, so when it comes to securing and protecting our Macs it's not just about setting passwords, although passwords are a good start, and that's actually one of the things we want to look at in this particular module is setting a firmware password, but how can I protect the data that's on my hard drive? When I'm adding a new device to my Apple account how do I understand whether it's actually truly me that's doing it, and that's where two-factor authentication can come in. We also want to talk about how we can protect the data that's going to go across the wire between us and our corporate office because some of us may work from home. We may be remote users. How can I protect my data? Ultimately, it's once again, a layered effect. There's many, many pieces that make up securing our Macs, and this just happens to be one of those sections that we're going to look at some of the other ways that we can help protect ourselves, so with that let's get started.

Providing Network Security
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Providing Network Security. When it comes to network security a big part of what we really need to look at is what happens if the wrong type of files get installed on our Macs? Typically, when we think about viruses and things like that we don't normally worry too much about it from the Mac perspective. Macs are pretty solid, as far as being able to help prevent that from taking place, but that doesn't mean we're foolproof. In fact, there's been more and more options or more and more viruses, spyware, etcetera that's been coming out lately that has actually been directed for the Macs, and that's what we want to look at in this particular section is how can I protect myself using built-in features, but also maybe a third-party app as well that can help provide me that network security, so that I can prevent those files from getting access to my system. So with that let's say we get started.

Securing the Operating System and Apps
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching, Securing the Operating System and Apps. When you think about the operating system that's the core, whether it's OS X or Mac OS that you might be using, that's the core of what makes our Mac run, and imagine what would happen if something were to, say, get in and damage the files, the operating system files themselves? That would basically mean our Mac becomes useless to us. We'd have to go through a process of reinstalling, and we might lose everything if we have not done things like good backups. Apps are also very important. We use those on a regular basis whether it's a recording app like I'm using here or whether it's using different apps for being able to write documents or send email or being able to create PowerPoint presentations. I mean, we use apps constantly throughout our day. Now when it comes to securing that environment we want to make sure that, first of all, we're not downloading apps that aren't safe for my Mac to run, but second, that we keep everything up-to-date, so that the vulnerabilities that might be there, whether it's in the operating system or the app itself, that we can prevent those from being exploited because we are keeping our systems up-to-date, and that's part of what we want to look at in this particular module. So with that what do you say we get started.

Additional Security Features
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Additional Security Features. You know, every so often I get stuck on a channel or I'm flipping through on my TV, and I see one of those infomercials, and at the very end of the infomercial when they're talking about pricing and all that they come up with that one thing, but wait, there's more, and that's kind of what I feel like in this particular module right here. We've talked a lot about different ways to protect and secure our Macs, but wait, there's more. There are some other features. Some of these features are brand new and specific to different hardware versions, like the brand new Macs that have the touchpad, and they have something called touch ID, a nice little biometric option for being able to be authenticated using your fingerprint, as opposed to a typical username and password. Some features, however, have been built and been stable for quite a while. Something like Time Machine, and Time Machine has been around for quite a while, and the benefit of using Time Machine is, well it backs up and stores our data just in case. Now it's really not necessarily a security feature, but it is a protection feature because imagine if your hard drive were to fail and all of our data was lost. How are we going to protect our Mac that way, right, or at least how are we going to protect our data and be able to get it back, so I can continue to function in my daily life? Not a good option if we were to lose all that. So that's some of the features we want to talk about in this particular module, including Safari. I mean Safari is a nice web browser that's been built-in to OS X for quite a few years, but there may be some security features in there we didn't know about. So with that, what do you say we get started?

Wrapping Up
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Wrapping Up. So we've come to the end of this course on securing and protecting our Macs, and as we go through this course or, I should say, as we went through this course we talked about some of the different exam topics and we tried to relate a lot of what we did to towards those exam topics, but some of the features that we actually talked about were not actually part of the exam, but they were things that we really should know when it comes to truly trying to secure and protect our Macs, and that's what I hope we got out of this particular course, was not only how to help prepare for the exam, but also how to prepare us for what we can expect when we're out working in this field in a daily daily basis. You know, what's it going to be like when we have different users that are sharing Macs and things like that? So now what we want to do is just go back and take a look at some of the things that we actually talked about during this course, and see what's coming up next. So with that, let's get started.