Proactively engaging with the Apple security community is Apple's most recent move in what appears, from the outside, that the company is stepping up its security game. Earlier this year Apple reportedly hired noted software security expert David Rice. That personnel move followed the hiring of Window Snyder, former security lead at Mozilla, last year.

"They've hired a number of high-profile people," says Rich Mogul, founder and analyst at researcher firm Securosis. "They've since fallen into the Apple vacuum, but I most definitely get the feeling that Apple is taking security more seriously."

Also, two independent sources close to Apple report that the company is aligning a security member as part of each product team, though CSO has not been able to confirm this.

Steps like this can only be good news for consumers of Apple products, enterprises, and Apple's own ambition to gain a larger piece of corporate sales.

While consumers inherently trust Apple OS X systems to be safer than its Windows competitors, businesses don't have that luxury. That's not to say consumers aren't justified in their belief. They are, as OS X attacks rarely rise above proof-of-concept malware that spread nowhere fast.