As a college professor and computer security researcher, this tidbit certainly caught my eye. There is a growing awareness of computer security and many schools will push the content throughout the curriculum. See the ACM's Computer Science Curricula 2013 for content areas and possible implementations.

Looking at the article, the final paragraph explains some things:

CloudPassage, meanwhile, also is reaching out to universities: it announced today that it will offer free CloudPassage Halo security-as-a-service platform accounts to US computer science programs as well as instructional templates, tutorials, and support. “They can use our infrastructure and products as an illustration, to get some experience,” CloudPassage’s Thomas says.

So, a company I've never heard of issues a press release that they did a "study" (i.e., hired a consultant to look through college course catalogs) that there is a lack in "cybersecurity education" (without actually testing what graduates of those programs know). And look, they are prepared to donate their niche market tools to any school that is willing to use them in required training courses.

I hate being so cynical, but this just reads as a PR move to gain publicity for a tech company.

I've actually used a variation on this. I'll use a green ziptie to close the zipper on my luggage, but the bag of zipties that I have in the luggage are all red. I carry the green zipties in my carryon (along with nail clippers to help remove it if needed) so I can replace it as needed. If the TSA opens it up, they'll either use no zipties or one of the red ones.

Completely agree. I was looking forward to an alternative to Facebook, but the early behavior from Google regarding account suspension and the lack of the ability to appeal that decision (unless you were a former Google employee with connections) killed it for me. I actually use my Google account for things. If my Facebook account disappeared, no problem. But if Google decided to drop me from Gmail and Google docs, well, that would have been a big problem. So now I never go into my Google+ account (except when they use deceptive links) for fear that they'll shut me out.

I don't believe that the MAC system in Mac OS X is intended to be user accessible. See page 23 of the Mac OS X Security Configuration document. You probably can access MAC permissions via the CLI, but it isn't supported.

You can also peruse the NSA/CSS Operating System Guidelines for various operating systems. I'll point out that the MS-Windows systems are supposed to be run in Specialized Security -- Limited Functionality mode which severely limits functionality (as the name implies) and MS recommends it only be used on systems where "compromise would cause the loss of life, the loss of very valuable information, or the loss of lots of money."