Securing your Mac is just as important as enhancing its performance. It doesn’t do any good to clean up, maintain, and organize your home or garage if you’re going to leave the door unlocked for anyone and everyone to drop in without your permission. The same situation is true of your Mac. Don’t go to all of the trouble of getting it running efficiently, organizing all of its files and folders, and performing maintenance tasks when you’ve left a door open to malicious coworkers, uninformed visitors, viruses, spyware, or thieves, all of which can harm or even destroy your Mac.
Tip: If you are the only one who ever accesses your Mac and it is in your home, some of these security measures may be overkill. You don’t have to employ all of the security measure introduced here; they are simply options for you to choose from.
Let’s start with the obvious. Your Mac should be physically secure. By that I mean if it’s in an office, you should be able to lock your office doors at night, and your cleaning staff, if you have one, should be bonded, insured, and drug tested. The computer should also be on a secure desk and in a clean environment (not in an extremely dusty or smoky room), and backup devices should be far enough away that a spilled soda can’t destroy both your Mac and your backups.
You should also make sure that when you leave your desk, coworkers, visitors, or children don’t have access to your personal data. That may require you to lock your door or log out of your Mac before leaving the room. One malicious coworker with a grudge could very easily walk into your office and send an e-mail from your account. If the e-mail is sent to the right person and contains just the right amount of evil, it can destroy a career. Make sure your Mac is physically secure.
One extremely easy way to secure your Mac is to create a login screen that requires the user to input both the user name and the password. This requires the would-be-intruder to know both instead of knowing only the password or getting that handy automatic login we all have come to love.
To change the way you (or others) log in to your Mac and to create a more secure environment, follow these steps:
1. Open System Preferences>Accounts.
2. Click Login Options.
3. In Display Login Window As, select Name And Password.
4. Although it isn’t necessary, deselect the Automatically Log In As option.
5. If you want to prevent anyone from changing these settings, click the lock.
When you leave your desk, you leave your Mac open for intruders. Anyone can walk up to your Mac and steal your latest ideas or delete an important file. Worse, they may even have access to your personal e-mail, diary, calendar, or similar items. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, configure your Mac to use a screen saver and to require a password after the screen saver has engaged.
Follow these steps to configure a screen saver and then configure a password to be used with it:
1. Open System Preferences>Desktop And Screen Saver>Screen Saver.
2. Select a screen saver from the list and move the slider to have the screen saver engage after a specific period of time.
3. Click Show All, and then select Security.
4. Check Require Password To Wake This Computer From Sleep Or Screen Saver.
5. Close System Preferences.
Another option is the option Log Out After ___ Minutes Of Inactivity. This may be a good option for you if you want to completely log out after a specific period of time but don’t want to have to be there to do it.