US Army video surveillance powered by Apple

Security System News is reporting today on the US Army's decision to use Mac OS X and Apple servers to run four video surveillance systems. When reliability and security are paramount, says Chris Gettings, Mac OS X is the choice. Chris is the CEO and president of video management software manufacturer VideoNEXT.

"You're not going to have some of the memory-leak issues that seem to plague different versions of the Windows systems," he says. "And mission-critical customers appreciate that."

Additionally, Mr. Pat Mercer, who has actually installed Mac-based systems for "...[a] large government entity" notes that low bandwidth, security and reliability are what those IT departments demand. "That's where the Mac conversation begins," he notes.

This isn't the first time we've seen the US Military using Apple products. In May we saw a story of soldiers using the iPod touch as an in-the-field translator. In December of '07, we published a post about more wide spread military adoption of Apple hardware and software. Of course, we can't forget the life-saving iPod.

[Via AppleInsider]

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Source: http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/?p=article&id=ss200910a0E…

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Security System News is reporting today on the US Army's decision to use Mac OS X and Apple servers to run four video surveillance systems....

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Chris

Hi James,

Apple is Unix. Its a derivative of BSD Unix with a fantastic front end. Its just as reliable for servers as is any other Unix. Note that the interview may not have been completely clear; my firm does not offer Windows for our security applications. We share your concern; we only install Red Hat Linux and other 'nix platforms such as OS-X for these mission critical systems. Thx.

Cheers,

Chris
videoNEXT

October 12 2009 at 6:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Chris's comment

jbilgihan

I'm aware that the mac os is BSD based but it wasn't when the imaging systems were originally designed. Most of systems were Solaris or Irix. I believe that this article refers to workstations for users as there is no reason to change the infrastructure.

James

October 13 2009 at 12:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ryan Trevisol

low bandwidth, security and reliability?

October 12 2009 at 2:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Ryan Trevisol's comment

jbilgihan

That is a nice nod to Apple but the DOD uses Unix for these things. While I love apple products there is no way the DOD should use Macs for this unless we are talking non-server products.

The fact that they used windows in the past is a bit disturbing - no places I've worked in DOD use Windows for mission critical systems.

James

October 12 2009 at 3:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rob

This is terrifying. OS X is fine for consumer use, but it has no good encryption options built in, as Apple's 'AES' encryption algorithm has noted flaws that opens it up for sidechannel attacks. Add to that the extra cost of xServes, Apple RAID cards, having to deal with HFS, and the almost necessary biannual 10.x updates, and it's hard to see why OS X would be chosen for such a role when more appropriate options exist (Solaris is probably most secure, Linux a little less, hell even Windows Server would allow for cheaper hardware, and offers the best encryption, although Linux/Solaris are the best choices). Also, with other Unix systems using the xwindow system for display, one can forward the x manager over ssh to display anything graphical from the system being sshed to on the client.

October 12 2009 at 10:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply