Apple Mac Set Up

Before using any Apple Mac, SIAT IT Services needs to perform three settings changes to avoid potentially disastrous problems:

• Firmware (EFI) Password

If a firmware password is set and then lost, it will prevent the machine from being able to boot from a user-specified device or partition, or for the machine to enter into Recovery mode. IT Services will set this to a standardized password to prevent this from happening.

• Filevault Master Password

Setting a master password for Filevault will allow IT Services to decrypt any Filevault volume where the original encrypter has forget the password.

• Guest Account

When the user of a Guest account logs off of the computer, all files created during that session will be deleted. This has caused some researchers to inadvertently lose their work. IT Services will de-activate this account.