Damien said:
We know that macs are not as insecure as windows but is there anything other than turning on the internal firewall i should do to keep it secure?
Security is all about reducing risks - it depends how far you want to go. Most Mac users enable the built-in firewall and leave it at that.
Some users turn on the firewall portion of their router. If you use a broadband router, it supports this and you know how to enable and configure it, then go ahead and do so.
I choose to use a dedicated software firewall between my home network and my router. I use an old 286 with a 512MB HDD - it runs an OpenSource firewall based on Linux. I am in the minority of Mac users in doing this.
There has never been a report of a major virus, crack, spyware or malware incident on Mac OS X and there has never been a report of any virus for Mac OS X taking hold (ISTR some academics demonstrating something under lab conditions when Mac OS X first came out, but never anything in the wild).
There is spyware for Mac OS X but it requires either the administrator password or an OS exploit to install. I have never seen any reports of the later being used to install spyware.
Mac OS X security is based on Unix, which is very robust - the weak point is the user. Make sure you pick hard-to-guess passwords for all your system users and especially for your administrator password. Never use a password based on a name or a dictionary word.
Make sure you only install software from reputable sources and never type your administrator password into a password field unless you know why the system is asking for it and you have explicity asked the system to do something that requires the administrator password.
To emphasise the last paragraph, Sony recently received a lot of press for installing flawed spyware on Windows and Mac systems. When you inserted a particular audio CD, the spyware installer would run. On Mac OS X, the installer would then prompt for the administrator password. Obviously, an audio CD should not need the administrator password in order for you to listen to your music. The software was flawed in that it significantly reduced the security of the Windows OS it was installed on, allowing malware (viruses and suchlike) to hide from the system administrator and his/her security tools.
It is possible. Mac OS X and BSD both have security vulnerabilities. It is, however, very unlikely. You can reduce the risks further by making sure that you always apply the Mac OS X security updates as soon as they become abailable and using at least one firewall (whether it is the one built into Mac OS X, the one in your router, or whatever).
My uni is full of viruses over the network, am I helping in the spread of them?
If you often exchange documents (particularly MS Office documents) with other users or forward on emails with strange attachements, you might be helping the spread of viruses. If you are worried about this and feel like being a good citizen, you could check out one of the anti-virus software packages for Mac OS X.
