Apple is Ten Years Behind Microsoft with Security Technologies - Antivirus Developer.

As Apple Macintosh computers get more popular among end-users, more and more viruses and malware emerge for the platform, which has been known for its invulnerability, and more Mac personal computers get attacked. To make the matters worse, Eugene Kaspersky, the head of Kaspersky Lab, a leading PC security company, claims that Apple is significantly behind Microsoft when it comes to security.
"I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. For many years I have been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It has always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms," said Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive officer of Kaspersky Lab, in an interview with CBR web-site.
It has always been a matter of time before mass malware for Apple Macintosh platform would emerge. Recent record sales of Macs have just catalyzed designers of viruses to develop  malicious software for Apple computers. The problem is that Microsoft is ready to fight the problems all the time and release appropriate patches within hours after a problem transpires. Apple could not react instantly on the recent Flashback and Flashfake outbreaks.
"Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on. We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one," said Mr. Kaspersky.
Essentially, Apple will have to do what Microsoft did ten years ago. It will have to reconsider update policy, create rapid-response security teams and invest more into security of its Mac OS in general.
"They 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 is 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]," concluded one of the world's top security experts.