Security Settings

Smack Kids 101 here. Today, this is just a brief video on, um, how to secure your Macintosh computer from the outside world and everywhere else a little more.

First of all, you want to open System Preferences by clicking the Apple, clicking System Preferences. You have to be an administrator to do this. Then, in this window, you want to click Security.

Now you want to click the lock and type your username and password. Okay, and then you want to disable automatic login. Require users to unlock each System Preference page. You probably don't want to check "log out after so and some amount of minutes of inactivity," but that's a good thing if you're a business owner or you know you just don't want to be logged in.

Then, yeah, you do want to use secure virtual memory, and you want to disable, um, remote control infrared receiver. This is, um, if you have an Apple remote, um, that allows you to trigger Front Row automatically and do stuff with Front Row from your app with your Apple remote. If you have a laptop or you don't have an Apple remote or anything like this, you just want to check this so that no one with an Apple remote can just annoy you.

And, of course, require password to wake this computer from sleep. That's when, if your computer's asleep and you try to wake it up by pressing the shift key or whatever, it'll say basically enter your username and password to, um, unlock this computer.

FileVault is, um, something it's very useful. You have to know the master password. Um, I happen to know it; once you turn FileVault on, you have to remember your password or the master password; otherwise, your files will be unreadable. What FileVault does is it encrypts all your files so no one can really read them from single-user mode or wherever unless they have your password or the master password.

You can click "Turn FileVault On," and that'll just take you a few minutes to, um, secure all your files. My favorite is Firewall up at the top here. You can allow all incoming connections. Um, that's not really a good thing to have checked. Allow only essential services? That's not good.

Set access for specific devices. Of course, if you have SSH enabled, they'll be up here. You can disable any one of these by, um, just, uh, control clicking it or minus plusing. I like Java; there, I like iChat; I like Safari, Java Preferences; that's good. Um, I like all of these.

Say I don't trust iTunes to just go out; I can just subtract it. Unfortunately, I didn't want to do that. So we can also add one by going into here and then finding, let's say, iTunes and then clicking Add, and then it's added iTunes back on. Um, so that's pretty nice.

You can also click Advanced, and you want to enable Firewall logging, and you definitely want to enable Stealth mode. This means that your computer is basically 100 percent secure; there's no way to connect to it unless you connect over SSH, etc.

Now I can click Open Log, and this will show a firewall log. This is a log of all the connections that have been made to my computer. Now this is kind of personal in my case because this has connections from websites and anything I've gone to, so I'll just close this.

You can read the log to, um, check exactly when they have done anything, when any connections really have happened on your computer. Um, so that's just a little securing video. Um, so thank you for watching, Mac heads. Subscribe and goodbye...