Take Control of Securing Your Mac, Third Edition

Keep your Mac safe from intruders, malware, and more!

Version 3.0, updated October 4, 2023

Secure your Mac against attacks from the internet and physical intrusion with the greatest of ease. Glenn Fleishman guides you through configuring your Mac to protect against phishing, email, or other exploits, as well as network-based invasive behavior. Learn about built-in privacy settings, the Secure Enclave, FileVault, hardware encryption keys, sandboxing, privacy settings, Advanced Data Protection, Lockdown Mode, resetting your password when all hope seems lost, and much more. Focuses on Sonoma; also covers Ventura and Monterey.

The digital world has never seemed more riddled with danger, even as Apple has done a fairly remarkable job across decades at keeping our Macs safe. But the best foot forward with security is staying abreast of past risks and anticipating future ones. Take Control of Securing Your Mac gives you all the insight and directions you need to ensure your Mac is safe from external intrusion, including the data you secure and sync with iCloud, now so tightly integrated with macOS features and security.

In recent years, Apple has enhanced their focus on protecting you against attacks that require physical access to your computer or malware that provides deep remote exploitation. You’ll learn about the enhanced Advanced Data Protection option for iCloud services, allowing you to keep all your private data inaccessible not just to thieves and unwarranted government intrusion, but even to Apple! But also get the rundown on encrypted startup volumes, FileVault’s login protection process, Lockdown Mode to deter direct network and phishing attacks, and passkeys and hardware secure keys for the highest level of Apple ID and website login.

Security and privacy are tightly related, and Take Control of Securing Your Mac helps you understand how macOS has increasingly compartmentalized and protected your personal data, and how to allow only the apps you want to access specific folders, your contacts, and other information. In Sonoma, that includes fitness and motion data captured from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Apple has also enhanced alerts in the menu bar when any software uses a mic or camera, or can view what’s happening on your screen—even for the most benign reasons.

Here’s what this book has to offer:

• Master a Mac’s privacy settings

• Calculate your level of risk and your tolerance for it

• Learn why you’re asked to give permission for apps to access folders and personal data

• Moderate access to your audio, video, screen actions, and other hardware inputs and outputs

• Get to know the increasing layers of system security deployed over the last few years in macOS

• Prepare against a failure or error that might lock you out of your Mac

• Share files and folders securely over a network and through cloud services

• Upgrade your iCloud data protection to use end-to-end encryption

• Control other low-level security options to reduce the risk of someone gaining physical access to your Mac—or override them to install system extensions

• Understand FileVault encryption and protection, and avoid getting locked out

• Investigate the security of a virtual private network (VPN) to see whether you should use one

• Learn how the Secure Enclave in Macs with a T2 chip or M-series Apple silicon affords hardware-level protections

• Dig into ransomware, the biggest potential threat to Mac users (though rare in practice)

• Discover recent security and privacy technologies, such as Lockdown Mode and passkeys