Apple products completely avoided the technology outage that plagued many PC systems around the world, but what makes the Mac computer product more secure than the PC?
Apple products have always been known to be a little different than the Personal Computer (PC).
Love or Hate
Often computer users either love or hate Apple’s Mac operating system often there are no in betweeners.
Most people that do not use a Mac prefer to use the Microsoft Windows platform as the operating system of choice.
This is why the Microsoft Windows operating system is built into nearly every single PC on earth, unless it uses another operating system known as Linux.
Microsoft recently came out with a public statement that the IT outage was the result of policies established by the European Commission through its Digital Markets Act (DMA).
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Open and Closed Systems
The difference between open and closed systems is what allowed bad code through a software update to cause a global computer catastrophe.
Mac’s have a unique “closed” operating system known as iOS, which is different than what Personal Computer’s use.
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PCs and the android operating system are “open” and built on the Microsoft Windows platform.
On Windows machines, CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software is a kernel module which accesses the entire system.
The kernel module operates at the core of a computer’s system and generally has complete control over the entire computer.
The kernel module is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different system processes.
Full Access to a PC
CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software gains access to the PC through kernel module access which achieves full access to a PC.
The kernel module manages memory, processes, files, and devices, and it’s basically the nervous system of the operating system.
Much of the software on a PC is typically limited to user mode, where bad code can’t cause harm to the computer’s operating system.
Protect the Core
However software that incorporates kernel module access can potentially cause catastrophic total machine failures.
This is especially true when the software update that has Kernel Module access has inherent flaws such as bad code.
In contrast, The Falcon software was not able to wreak similar havoc on Mac products because they do not allow external access to Kernel Module.
A result of Apple’s policies to not give software makers kernel access, enables it to protect the core operating system of every Mac product.
This is what prevented Mac products from experiencing the blue screen of death and the global IT outage that PC’s fell victim too.
System Extensions
Apple understood many years ago that using a “Kernel module” was potentially less stable and more risky than using another mode of operation.
As a result, in 2019 Apple released a new operating system called macOS Catalina.
Apple’s new macOS Catalina is a much more stable operating system which no longer requires access to the kernel module.
As a result, Apple deprecated kernel extensions and transitioned to system extensions that run in a user space instead of at a kernel level.
The change made Macs more stable and more secure, adding protection against unstable software updates like the one CrowdStrike released to PCs.
Policies to Protect
Apple’s policies to protect its products through limiting access to its computer’s core functionality, makes them closed off, but also decreases the exposure from external threats.
Technology threats do not just come from external sources such as hackers or malicious IT actors.
In fact a technology threat can be the result of a simple software error that if undetected yet allowed to access a computer’s core functions can actually debilitate it.
A credit to Apple’s business strategy has made it impossible for Macs to have a similar failure as the PC because of fundamental changes to the new operating system.
