Apple is ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security, Eugene Kaspersky told CBR after malware was found on Macs recently. Kaspersky, co-founder of computer security company Kaspersky Labs, said previously there was little difference between Mac and Windows when it came to security. Yet the new Flashback malware on Macs is different because, "using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms." While Windows may remain the primary platform for malware creators, with Mac market share increasing, more attacks on the Mac OS platform are expected. Kaspersky says that Mac users could soon experience what Windows users experienced 12 years ago, when Blaster malware infected millions of computers. Microsoft tried to fix it by releasing several updates, security patches and so on. The Windows XP SP 2 update finally solved the issue. The only time my computer was infected was with a version of Blaster malware, called Sasser. Fortunately, the malware was easy to remove and caused no data damage. To avoid the problems Microsoft had 12 years ago, Kaspersky believes Apple should be forced to change their update cycles and invest more in security software.

[Apple] will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software. That's what Microsoft did in the past after so many incidents like Blaster and the more complicated worms that infected millions of computers in a short time. They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it's time for Apple [to do that].

I believe security is a big problem for Apple. If Apple is unable to secure Macs from recent malware (Flashback and Backdoor), users might turn from the Mac OS platform and opt for Windows or Linux. Apple now needs to be very proactive and take immediate security measures to avoid further damages.