MacOS is a beautiful operating system and packed with good options to keep your Mac running smoothly. If you also want to protect your Mac (and you want to), then there are also the necessary functions. We put a few in the spotlight here.
Your Mac probably runs completely smoothly and you have few problems with the device. To keep it that way, it is important to do a safety check every now and then. Have I turned on enough protection in macOS and are my files and photos safe? Use the tips in this article to make your Mac a lot safer.
Password management with keychain
If you don’t want to remember all the passwords of all the services you use on your Mac, choose a password manager. This is a program that can automatically save and create passwords. You only need one password, from the manager himself. MacOS itself offers a password manager called Keychain. If you come across a login screen on a website or in macOS, Keychain offers to come up with a password.
To gain insight into all your passwords, you can open the Keychain Access application. You will find it in the folder Programs, Utilities. Keychain is available for both macOS and iOS and iPadOS and can share passwords between these systems if you have the option Keychain enabled at System Preferences, iCloud. If you have a smartphone or tablet with Android, you can turn to an external password manager, such as LastPass or 1Password.
Firewall on macOS
A firewall is used by an operating system to ward off attacks from the outside. It is therefore recommended to turn it on in macOS as well. You can find the firewall at System Preferences, Security & Privacy. click on Firewall and press the padlock at the bottom of the screen. Enter your administrator password and click the button Enable firewall. Bee Firewall options you can determine exactly which programs or connections have or do not have access. Click on the plus and add a program; behind it you choose for example Allow incoming connections if a program is allowed to accept incoming connections.
If you want more control over exactly which app can make connections, install the application Little Snitch. It even allows you to restrict a particular program from connecting to its own servers, for example if you don’t want a program to check for updates or install them automatically. This program does cost money.
Encrypt files with FileVault
If you want your files to be protected from outsiders, you can choose to encrypt them with FileVault. You can find this option at System Preferences if you on Security and privacy clicks. Choose FileVault and click on the lock to make changes. To start the process, choose Enable FileVault. Your Mac will now encrypt your entire disk and give you a recovery code at the end of the process. You should keep or remember this recovery code, as you can lose your data without your macOS password and this recovery code.
The advantage of automatically encrypting your files is that third parties can never access your data without a password. Even if they copy the contents of the hard disk, the data cannot be accessed without a password. A disadvantage is that encrypting your files takes up a bit of your CPU capacity. You won’t notice much difference on a modern Mac with SSD, but a Mac with an old-fashioned hard drive may feel a little slower.
Set Antivirus and Gatekeeper
There are far fewer viruses for the Mac than for Windows, but that does not alter the fact that occasionally a special Mac virus pops up. It is useful to install a virus scanner, if only to ensure that you do not unintentionally send viruses to people with Windows PCs. There are a number of free virus programs for the Mac; well-known options include Avast Security and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac.
In any case, make sure you configure Gatekeeper. This is a feature that does not allow installing unsafe locations. If you download a program that is not from the Mac App Store and is not known to Apple, you will receive a warning that it is not wise to install the program. Only if you are really sure that you want to install a program, then open the installation file via the right mouse button menu. Choose Open and you can install the application.
You check whether you have Gatekeeper on System Preferences, Security & Privacy, General. There are two options; the most strict version is App Store, the less strict version is App Store and developers whose identities are known.
Turn on Find My Mac
What you should at least enable on a Mac laptop is the Find My Mac option. You may know this from your iPhone; the feature allows you to remotely wipe or block your device if it is stolen or lost. Find My Mac is part of iCloud, so you must be signed in to iCloud within macOS. Go to System Preferences, iCloud and put a check mark in front Find my Mac. Confirm the action and within a few seconds the function is activated.
Now if you navigate to icloud.com from any other computer or smartphone and log in with your iCloud credentials, you can see the exact location of your Mac. Your Mac must of course be connected to the internet. You can remotely wipe the Mac, play a sound or block the Mac and display a notification.
Surfing with 1.1.1.1
Internet providers can see which websites you visit. Your search request (the url) has to be converted by the provider into an IP address such as 138.289.332.29. Normally this is done by your provider’s dns server. Whether your provider actually actively accesses this data depends on your provider. If you want to be a little more invisible, you can choose to connect to an external dns server. Cloudflare company offers the service 1.1.1.1 and promises that it will never access or take your data.
To redirect all your internet traffic to 1.1.1.1 you need to System Preferences, Network go and on here Advanced clicks. Click on the tab DNS, remove the ip addresses that are already there and add the following four addresses by adding them one by one with the plus sign: 1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1, 2606: 4700: 4700 :: 1111 and 2606: 4700: 4700 :: 1001.
Use Time Machine
Finally, of course you want to have a backup copy of the documents on your Mac. The easiest way to do this is through Time Machine, the integrated solution in macOS. To activate Time Machine, go to System Preferences and choose you Time Machine. Make sure you have an external hard drive or SSD on your Mac, click Select disk and choose the disk. Your external drive must be (much) larger than the internal drive you want to back up, because your Mac periodically makes copies of new files and folders you’ve created.
If you accidentally delete something, click on in the Dock Time Machine and you can go back in time from a particular folder until you find the document you deleted. You select the file and choose To restore to return it to its original location.
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