Historical Documents – Page 6 – Bill Gallop Consulting

Between September 2005 and July 2011 I was a regular contributor to MacFormat in the UK.

Whereas I’m posting the published articles for my MacWarehouse writing with the MacFormat ones I’ve decided to post the text as submitted, including any comments that I included for design. I am, however, allowing myself a few small edits for clarity.

The particular one is my ninth column, written in May 2006. This is presented purely as a historical record as much, if not all, of the information contained in it may well have changed in the meantime.

A Shortcut to Special Characters

Tucked away at the bottom of the Edit menu is an option called “Special Characters…”. Selecting this brings up a character palette which allows you pick and choose a number of graphical characters without struggling to remember exactly which key combination you need to enter to be able to type them. This is a bit like the old OS 9 Keyboard desk accessory except the organization is much better. Instead of simply seeing a picture of the keyboard and having to try a number of different modifier keys to find out what characters they give the Character Palette is organized into groups such as Currency Symbols, Digits and even Braille Patterns.

You can add characters into a list of frequently used ones which you can access via the Favorites tab and at the bottom of the window are two disclosure triangles that allow you to see related characters and how the character looks in the various fonts that contain it. Not every font contains every character so if you are planning on sending a document that contains one of the special characters to someone else be sure that they have the same font installed as otherwise they may not see the character at all or even get an entirely different character. There is even a search box at the bottom that will allow you to search for characters by name.

If you look at the Edit menu in Text Edit you will see that there is a keyboard shortcut for “Special Characters…”, Apple-Alt-T, however if you open up Mail and have a look at the Edit menu there isn’t one. It would be really useful if we could have a keyboard shortcut that brought up the Character Palette in any program that supports it and not just those that already have one. We can do this by going to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane in System Preferences.

Underneath the list of current keyboard shortcuts click on the + sign and create a shortcut for All Applications. In the Menu Title box you will need to type “Special Characters…” without the quotes. One thing to watch out for is that the three dots are not separate characters, they are a single character called an ellipsis so you will need to type Alt; or simply insert it from the Punctuation section of the Character Palette.

Finally you need to assign a combination of keys that will activate your shortcut. Your first instinct will be to use AppleAltT since this is what is already used by some applications. However, if you look through the menus of Mail you will see that this combination is already defined for “Move Again” in the Message menu, it would be good if Apple’s various development teams all agreed on the same shortcuts. Therefore I suggest that you use Shift-Apple-Alt-T instead. This will override the Apple-Alt-T that is already defined in other applications so you will have a shortcut that you can use everywhere.

Quit any applications that are already running as the new keyboard shortcut will only be recognised by applications that are launched after it has been defined.

You will now be able to easily call up the Character Palette from any application that supports it by typing Shift-Apple-Alt-T.

Between September 2005 and July 2011 I was a regular contributor to MacFormat in the UK.

The particular one is my eighth column, written in April 2006. This is presented purely as a historical record as much, if not all, of the information contained in it may well have changed in the meantime.

Securing your Mac, pt 4

Following last month’s diversion into the world of malware it is time to take a look at the security issues facing networks of Macs and networking in general.

For almost any business one of their most valuable assets is their intellectual property (IP), whether that be the designs for a new product or a database of their customers complete with account history. In addition to taking precautions against loosing IP through equipment failures by backing up the servers that it is stored on it is critical to ensure that the company’s property stays the company’s property. It is not just James Bond that has to deal with industrial espionage and a disaffected employee taking your customer database to a competitor can have a very damaging impact on business.

The tools that Apple provides for free with OS X Server can be used to ensure that users cannot store any information at all on their workstations, they can only keep it on the server itself. You can also disable CD or DVD burners and prevent users from saving files to USB or FireWire drives. These preferences can be enforced even if a computer is taken off the network and if you do need to take data off-site then do it in the form of an encrypted disk image which will make it almost impossible for somebody to read the data without authorisation if it is lost.

If you have wireless devices on your network, including Macs with AirPort or Bluetooth cards, be aware that you cannot easily put up barriers to stop their radio waves from spreading outside of the building. I have known business where it is perfectly possible to sit in a car in the street and connect to the company network without needing any password or other form of authentication. If you have wireless devices that are not required then disable them so that a user cannot inadvertently create an insecure access point to the network. For the access points that you do require take the following steps; disable broadcasting the network name so that you cannot find it by browsing, make sure that the network name itself is unobvious, e.g. don’t call it “AirPort”, require WPA2 encryption to be able to access the network and finally lock the network so that only specified wireless cards can access it.

You can take access control further by introducing two factor authentication with solutions from companies such as RSA and CRYPTOCard. These solutions require a user to not only know their password but also to be in possession of a token of some description to be able to access the network. Neither the token nor the password on it’s own is enough.

Two factor authentication comes into it’s own when remote access solutions are considered. The internet is inherently insecure but it is possible to create secure tunnels from point to point. If you need users to be able to access company data from home or whilst on the road then consider setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) which will allow you to create a secure tunnel from wherever they are in the world to the office and work as if their Mac was connected directly to the network and keep out prying eyes.

It is a very simple task to download a piece of open source software such as Ethereal and sit in your local coffee shop watching unencrypted but sensitive information going back and forth across the internet. If you don’t keep an eye on your data somebody else will.

Securing your network can be an expensive and time consuming business and the more secure it is the less friendly it will be to those who you want to access the network. How far you take network security and how much time and money you spend on it will depend on how valuable your data is to your business.