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Apple's new OS X Lion has some great new features like versions for tracking changes to your files, auto save to ensure you never lose any data and some much-improved default apps like Mail and Safari.
Less publicized are a number of under the hood improvements that go a long way to making OS X 10.7 more secure and better at protecting your privacy, both online and off.
Lion boasts an entirely new application security model that's leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors. The application sandboxing makes it tough for the bad guys to launch attacks that move from one app to another -- a malicious website that wants to access your files is out of luck in Lion.
While that's a great feature there's several things you can do to make Lion even more secure.
Here's our guide to making sure that you get the most out of the new privacy and security features in OS X 10.7.
== Security ==
Turn on the firewall. Head to System Preferences >> Security & Privacy and select the Firewall tab. Click the lock at the bottom of window so that you can make changes and then enable the firewall. With the firewall on, Lion will automatically prompt you whenever a new application wants to connect to the web. That way you always know exactly which apps are dialing out.
Next up, in the same System Preference pane is FileVault, which encrypts your hard drive on the fly. Unlike previous versions of FileVault, this release encrypts well below the file-level, making it much faster and more transparent. We recommend FileVault to anyone with a laptop.
== Privacy ==
Safari 5.1, which is available as part of Lion or as a separate download for those sticking with OS X 10.6, has several privacy enhancements worth checking out.
The first is a new "Private AutoFill" feature that won't auto-fill web forms until you tell it to. You can even choose the specific info your want filled in.
There's also a new "Privacy" option in Safari's preference pane where you can control which sites are allowed to set cookies, delete any cookies that you might have accumulated and even get rid of Flash cookies, along with any other info a website might have stored in browser.
== Conclusion ==
While Lion is more secure than its predecessors, that doesn't mean it isn't vulnerable to attack. Also use caution when downloading files from the web and only open files from trusted sources.
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