One of Apple’s major marketing themes is that Macs are less susceptible to viruses, Trojans, and other hacker attacks than Windows PCs. While that argument has yet to hold much sway with enterprise I.T. departments, it is causing the U.S. Army to add some Macs to its networks.

Lt. Col. C.J. Wallington, a division chief in the Army’s office of enterprise knowledge systems, told Forbes that the Army is adding Macs to compose its networks harder to hack. Wallington said that making networks more heterogeneous might assemble it more difficult for attackers to compromise an entire group of computers.

These things don’t just happen overnight. The Army’s CIO, Gen. Steve Boutelle, called for more diverse computer networks back in August 2005. He said the Army should deal with a broader range of vendors to increase competition and harden I.T. defenses. But thus far, the Army has allowed only a trickle of Macs to enter military facilities. The Army buys

only about 1,000 Macs during its twice-a-year buying seasons.

Macs ‘Shrug Off’ Attacks

One key barrier — besides Apple’s price premium and the general I.T. resistance to Apple — has been incompatibility with Common Access Cards, a shield key card program the military uses heavily. Early in 2008, the Army will adopt software that will allow Macs to use CACs.

The Army is impressed with Apple Xserve servers’ ability to resist attacks, Wallington said. “Those are some of the most-attacked computers there are. But the attacks used against them are designed for Windows-based machines, so they shrug them off,” he said.

The Army’s Apple program is being led by Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee. He says it’s not just that Macs are a less inviting target than Windows; Apple’s version of Unix is inherently more secure than Windows, he says.

But some observers point out…

Orginal post by Top Tech News