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Looking for Professional Advice ...

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... and I know I came to the right place ...

I work for a FTSE 500 company and I was recently asked to join a team who is working on the future strategy for desktops & laptops.
Current office environment is 100% Windows XP with MS Office productivity tools.

The team was asked to " think outside the box " so how about Apple and MAC OS X as the future standard desktop experience ?

A lot of things need to be considered so each team member has an area of focus.
Being the European Information Security Manager, I was assigned the area of ...... Guess What :)

The project is still in its infancy so basically trying to capture some experiences, do's and don'ts ...

Has anyone on the forum been through a similar exercise ?

Any experiences in using Apple and MAC OS X in an office environment ?

Is there an application out there on MAC OS X that captures and presents all changes done to files on the disk ( besides finder and the already available logs )

Any direction you can give me will be highly appreciated !

Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Marc
 
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As an idea, great.
As a reality, negative.

It would take sooooo much money right now and especially if you're using custome apps. If you're doing that and then you buy Macs to run Windows programs, what's the point of spending $1000 on a desktop vs. $300.

You'd have to retrain everyone too. You're IT department would hate you. I'm pretty sure that the majority of them probably do not have extensive experience with networking and OSX. If you're IT guys and gals are running Windows server, it's going to be a real nightmare for them.

Plus try finding a large IT company that supports Apple hardware. AFAIK, Apple doesn't do onsite tech work. Any service contract you get for windows boxes will usually have a tech coming out to fix anything. Plus large companies like ESA lease the equipment. This is better in the long run as they do service, supply computers, monitors and printers, and do a periodic equipment refresh based on the contract. That means once every so many years, they upgrade all the machines in use and your company doesn't have to buy all new machines and throw out the old ones.

Having an all Apple desktop force would be nice in idea, but actually implementing it will cost you so much more. I mean after all, Apple is the only person that makes a computer that you can legally run OS X on. You can buy a Windows box from anyone.
 
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I agree with the above.

We all know security wise Apple is the No.1 solution with it's unix core etc. But as said the premium product always has the premium price tag.

But if I were you I'd tell them about your apple solution. Just to let them know about it. I know it's not really fesable as the above poster said but pointing out the good benifits an Apple office would have over you one to them might make them change a few things.

Maybe having just one or two Macs there that can talk to the PCs. But use those Macs for all the sensitive information and the rest of the PCs for the general day to day stuff. Even if the best solution isn't possible for you, you should at least let everyone know it exists.
 
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But use those Macs for all the sensitive information

Even this isn't going to be a practical solution. Most large businesses process so much "sensitive" information that a few Macs wouldn't be able to hold the work load. I mean, say he worked for a credit card company? And even then, it's not Windows security you have to worry about. I'd bet a large sum of money that ever single one of those computers goes through a large set of servers that act as a firewall, virus/worm/malicious code detector/etc... If not, then his company has a really serious issue.

At my government facility, our desktops are only giving us internet and external access after they process the code and everything else. And if some one wants in, they're going to get in. Social engineering has nothing to do with how good OS X's security is.
 

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