Sophos Antivirus offers full Mac protection from viruses, Trojans and worms, stops all threats, even those designed for Windows. Not only is your computer safe—the people running PCs you send files to are safe from threats too. Secure web browsing: Be safer online.

“As Mac popularity grows so does the interest in developing threats for the platform, and while it is far more secure than Windows, it’s not 100% safe,” Simon Royal writes for Low End Mac. “Do we need to think about Mac anti-virus?” “I’ve been a Mac user for 15 years and have enjoyed using a computer without the hassle of finding an anti-virus suite, maintaining and keeping my computer clean,” Royal writes. “With the introduction of Mac OS X and the rise in popularity of Apple’s portable devices, the Mac is no longer for the nerdy; it is now perceived as ‘cool’ – and with this comes a larger user base. More users mean those intent on infecting computers of the world could now see the Mac platform as a viable place to attack. In this article, I take a look at Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition I have been running Sophos on my 2009 MacBook running Mavericks for just over a week, and I haven’t noticed any performance drop since it has been installed.” “Whether or not you think Mac anti-virus is necessary, is there any harm to having it installed?

After all it, doesn’t suck resources, require time to maintain and update it, and its free,” Royal writes. “I intend on keeping it installed.” Read more in the full article. I pointed out in a reply below to Johnny Appleseed what’s going on with Mac malware at the moment. It’s up to individuals to decide what to do. But I can point out that there have been two Mac specific botnets since 2009.

The first botnet used infected WAREZ installers, including a hacked installer for iWork. That botnet had over 100,000 Macs. A more recent botnet, in the sprint of 2012, had over 600,000 Macs. The infections were caused by the installation of the Flashback series of Trojans. They were called Flashback because they posed as installers for Adobe Flash Player. Derek, I’m not sure of the point of your post. Are you advocating the installation of anti-virus software on the Mac or are you saying that it’s fine running a Mac without anti-virus software.

Sorry, your posts are informative but a bit too verbose for me to pick out the essence. I’m in the no anti-virus camp simply because I don’t see the need to eat up CPU cycles and memory just to run anti-virus on my Mac so long as I am careful as to what I download and give authorisation to. It seems to me to be an unnecessary expense in terms of resources on a Mac. I’ve been focusing on targeted subjects, not the whole. The best general statement I can make is that it’s up to the individual whether they want anti-malware.

As someone who writes about Mac security, here’s what I do: 1) I have ClamXav installed and up-to-date. It’s not the best. But there is a gang of us who continue to press the issue of keeping the ClamAV project current with Mac malware signatures.

It’s annoying. Meanwhile, Mark Allan’s ClamXav GUI for ClamAV is EXCELLENT.

2) For the paid anti-malware, the one I like best and continue to pay for is Intego’s VirusBarrier. Best mac computer for video and film editing. It too is EXCELLENT.

It scores excellent as well for finding current malware of all kinds, Mac, Windows and Linux. I highly recommend it. –You have to run it once for your entire computer for it to tag safe files. This is a relatively slow process. From then on, it skips over those tagged files and only analyzes new or changed files, which is FAST! 3) For enterprise Macs, I recommend Sophos. They’ve got a great reputation and are also terrific contributors to security within the Mac community.

Plus, they offer a free version for individual users that also has a great reputation. What I’d avoid: Obviously anything Symantec. Rufus 2.11 for mac. I not only despise the evil of that company but their Norton anti-malware frequently scores low on detection. It’s also infamous for screwing up the Macs where it’s installed. Also well hated is MacKeeper.

It’s the worst of the worst from all reports. Plus they’re incredible scammers as proven by their consistent click-jacking on the web to fool people into thinking their computers are infected. I don’t just suggest you avoid MacKeeper. I encourage people to actively work to get this garbage OUT of the Mac community permanently, it’s that evil. That’s my wordy summary.

Make of it what you will. I keep challenging this myth of the 600,000 Mac botnet where ever it pops up. First of all, to get infected with this botnet one had to download infected character definitions from obscure websites in Eastern Russia.. Yet somehow, according to the intercept honeypot records, the vast majority of the infections were all in the United States (!) yet records did not show sufficient usage traffic to account for it.

Secondly, no one ever found any infected Macs in the wild.. Only reports of the kind “I had a friend who had a second cousin who had a friend whose Mac was infected.” People who manage large numbers of Macs only reported that they found they had Macs that were listed as members of the botnet because the Mac’s UUID was on the honeypot’s list. However, many Macs were on that list that were found and TESTED and found to be Trojan free, in-infected, and in fact, had NEVER had Java ever installed on them! Some had never even been opened out of their factory sealed boxes and were still unsold.. Without Java, a requirement for the botnet to operate.