Apple is ramping up its fight against malware

Ensuring platform security is hard, but when a company the stature of Apple begins to ramp up protection of its ecosystem, every IT decision maker should pay attention. Unfortunately, this is precisely what’s happening: Apple is now updating fundamental protection at a faster clip than it’s ever done before.

Apple’s security teams are alert

That important revelation comes from Howard Oakley at the excellent Eclectic Light Company blog. He notes that in the six weeks ending Feb. 9 Apple, has updated a Mac security feature called XProtect five times — introducing 11 new rules to the service.

The entire report is worth a read, but one paragraph in particular stands out and should be seen as a warning to everyone in tech.

“Apple’s security engineers appear to be in the midst of a campaign against a combination of agile, sophisticated, and recent attacks. Adload, Genieo and Pirrit have long histories of evading static detection, and this is perhaps the first time that they have been put under such pressure. Apple must be playing the long game, in the hope that the three won’t be able to sustain the pace.”

Those rules within XProtect aim to protect against a dizzying array of malware families. The report explains that three of these families are new and sophisticated.

Don’t be alarmed. Do be aware

Without wanting to create undue alarm, the frequency of updates strongly suggests Apple is aware of new attacks and that its security teams are hustling to protect users.

This also hints that tech decision makers (and everyone is a tech decision maker if they use tech at all) should do anything necessary to ensure that their own perimeter and edge security is agile and robust.