Security features for iMac
Your iMac with Apple silicon provides security features to protect what’s on your computer and prevent unauthorized software apps from loading during startup:
Secure startup: Support for secure startup is turned on automatically. It’s designed to verify that the operating system software loaded on your computer at startup is authorized by Apple.
If your iMac doesn’t start because it detects an untrusted component, it starts up from a secure recovery partition and automatically corrects issues if possible. To learn how to set security options, see Change security settings on the startup disk of a Mac with Apple silicon.
Secure storage: Your iMac storage drive is encrypted with hardware keys to provide advanced levels of security. In the event of a catastrophic failure, data recovery may not be possible, so you need to back up your files to an external source. See Use macOS Recovery on a Mac with Apple silicon.
You can set up Time Machine or another backup plan to regularly back up your files. See Back up your files with Time Machine, and the Apple Support article Back up your Mac with Time Machine.
System integrity: Your iMac with Apple silicon is designed to verify that the version of macOS software loaded during startup is authorized by Apple, and continues behind the scenes to protect the authorizations established for macOS. This makes it harder for malware or malicious websites to exploit your Mac.
Data Protection: In addition to the default storage drive encryption in iMac, third-party app developers can use file-level encryption to better protect sensitive data, without impacting system performance.
Note: In rare circumstances, such as a power failure during a macOS upgrade, your iMac may become unresponsive and the firmware on the chip may need to be revived. See the Apple Support article How to revive or restore Mac firmware.
Learn more. See the Apple Platform Security Guide.