US Army IT continues to diversify via the Mac

The relative security merits of Mac OS and Windows are not a surprise to military technologists -- back in 1999, the www.army.mil website was moved to Mac OS 9 and Webstar to deter hacker attacks on the previous Windows NT-based servers, and the site remains hosted on Mac OS X and XServes today, still running Webstar (now published by Kerio) rather than the open-source Apache server. Deployments to desktops, however, have not necessarily tracked the back-office adoption of Macs in the military, despite official recognition that there's risk in a one-platform-fits-all approach.

Today's Forbes article on Army adoption of the Mac, while partly old news (the original initiative to create a more heterogeneous and secure computing environment dates to 2005), does note that the Army plans to roll out Thursby Software's CAC bundle early next year, to enable full Mac compatibility with Common Access Card security controls. This isn't the first try at a CAC implementation on Mac OS X (Apple's included some of the needed pieces, and the Navy published a thorough PDF guide to getting them working in Tiger) but it promises to be the most comprehensive and well-supported.

One new Leopard feature that may well prove essential to Army use of Mac OS X, which went unremarked in the Forbes story: POSIX compliance. Now that Mac OS X really, truly is UNIX, it could begin to replace HP and Solaris deployments in some military roles.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

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The relative security merits of Mac OS and Windows are not a surprise to military technologists -- back in 1999, the www.army.mil website...

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T Arlauskas

Well - this is good news for me. I can't wait for the Army to buy an enterprise license for the Mac CAC software. I'm still trying to get my CAC card reader to work in Parallels.

December 22 2007 at 12:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

williamlane

The link to the Forbes article

http://www.forbes.com//www.forbes.com/home/technology/2007/12/20/apple-army-hackers-tech-security-cx_ag_1221army.html

returns this

Something's gone awry! The page you requested could not be found

December 22 2007 at 12:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Nick

Apple needs to make portable units without iSight if they really want to see inroads. The camera is killing their ability to replace Sun/HP UNIX workstations.

December 21 2007 at 11:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Luigi193

I FREAKING SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!!!
AND ANY OTHER AMERICA WHO DOESN'T CAN BURN!!!

You may not agree with whats going on, But you better support them...

December 21 2007 at 10:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Luigi193's comment

Adrian vG

There there, no one said anything bad about your troops

here, have a cookie

December 22 2007 at 5:11 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark 2000

Support your troops by signing up and joining them of STFU.

December 22 2007 at 3:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

webmaster

I'm assuming that the Army is holding off on buying Intel Macs if they're still running WebSTAR. Last I checked, Kerio appeared to have bought the software so they could sell their own mail server to WebSTAR mail's users, and didn't seem interested in doing anything with the Web server besides continuing to sell it. I'd love to be wrong, but I think too many people have given up and moved on to Apache on OS X for WebSTAR to be a viable product any more. We used it as our server for about 13 years before pulling the plug this year.

December 21 2007 at 9:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ironically enough, Safari won't open army.mil right now because the "server stopped responding" or is "too busy."

Hrm...

December 21 2007 at 8:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to JK's comment

whoops, there we go! It works now...

December 21 2007 at 8:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jubei

Good news getting OSX in there. Safer for all.

December 21 2007 at 7:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark 2000

If I was Steve I would tell the military to go stuff themselves. You don't need that kind of money. Let windows computers kill people.

December 21 2007 at 7:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Mark 2000's comment

Andrew

Computers don't kill people, people kill people :)

And while I might not be cheering the US troops in Iraq, because I'm not American, I fully support the US armed forces right to exist. There's no shame in defending your country. Regardless of what bad choices they have made.

And I imagine most US citizens would want them to have the best possible equipment regardless - and that's why they should absolutely have Macs ;)

December 21 2007 at 7:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Simon Arch

"There's no shame in defending your country."

True. I wish they WERE, but... *sigh*

December 21 2007 at 11:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply