BACKGROUNDThough it is common to talk about “computer viruses”, that term actually includes
viruses, worms, trojan horses, macros, and other malware. The impact of having one or more of these malware on your computer can range from benign, to sluggish performance, crashing, corrupted documents, to complete erasure of your drive. There is also the risk of passing the malware on to others by way of email or file transfer. Currently over 600,000 active malware exist in the Windows world. There are close to 200 active malware in the Macintosh world.
SHOULD YOU PROTECT YOUR MAC AGAINST MALWARE?
Absolutely. Even though the risk of infection is far less on a Macintosh than a Windows computer, the consequences of infection can be devastating. But one must understand there is a trade-off. Anti-virus (anti-malware) software can take 10% or more of your CPU time. This has to be balanced against the possibility of infection, passing along an infection to others (it’s really not nice to pass a virus to others), losing data, directory damage, and very expensive data recovery and system repair. However as a generic blanket statement I do recommend (almost
demand) installing anti-malware software on every PC and Macintosh, as the risk far outweighs the cost.
WHICH ANTI-MALWARE TO USEDozens of anti-malware utilities exist for Windows systems. Some free, some shareware, most commercial for-fee. One of the best available is free, and comes from Microsoft (I know, “quality” and “free” are not typically associated with M$). It may be downloaded from the
Microsoft Security Essentials website.
There are several commercial anti-malware utilities available for the Mac, and even a few free and shareware utilities. As always, there are pros, cons, and trade-offs. Typically, I recommend installing
Intego VirusBarrier as one of the fastest, most effective, and full-featured available. However, if the budget isn’t available I recommend
Sophos Anti-Virus for Home. Sophos is as effective and fast as Intego, though it lacks features outside of catching malware. And for non-commercial use, it is FREE!
Installing either of these utilities isn’t much more than a couple of mouse clicks. Properly configuring them is another story. To ensure that your computer is fully protected, follow our step-by-step guides to configure
Intego VirusBarrier X6 and
Sophos Home Edition.
The commercial offerings include:
Intego VirusBarrier. $50 for 2-user license.
- Great interface.
- Realtime signature-based and behavior-based scanning.
- Protects against both Mac- and Windows-specific malware.
- Excellent performance, low impact on overall system performance.
Norton AntiVirus. $50.
- Dated interface.
- Realtime signature-based protection.
- Protects against both Mac- and Windows-specific malware.
- Good performance, low impact on overall system performance.
McAfee VirusScan for Mac. $38 (minimum order 3 licenses)
- Dated interface.
- Realtime signature-based and behavior-based scanning.
- Protects against both Mac- and Windows-specific malware.
- Good performance, low impact on overall system performance.
- May be centrally managed.
Sophos Endpoint Security and Control. Pricing based on volume. And
Sophos Anti-Virus for Home. Free for non-commercial use.
- Good interface.
- Realtime signature-based and behavior-based scanning.
- Protects against both Mac- and Windows-specific malware.
- Good performance, low impact on overall system performance.
- May be centrally managed (only for the Endpoint product)
VIRUS REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Tags: virus, anti-virus, norton AntiVirus, Sophos Anti-Virus, Sophos Endpoint Security and Control, McAfee VirusScan, Intego VirusBarrier, SecureMac, Cisco Cyber Risk Reports, United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team
