Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices

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Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices

1 February 2013 2,024 views 6 Comments

Compare benchmarks for 20 AV products and find which is the best Mac antivirus app.

Though you probably have never heard of Thomas Reed before, now is a very good time to get acquainted. On his site, Thomas’ Tech Corner, he’s published benchmarks for 20 AV products in a quest to answer the question — which is the best Mac antivirus app?

“In this test, a total of 128 samples were collected, containing items from 24 different malware families,” writes Reed.

That may sound like a lot of viruses and virus families, but it’s a tiny fraction of the millions of known viruses and other types of malware that afflict Windows PCs. Further, according to Reed, “[T]here is no known malware capable of infecting a Mac running a properly-updated version of Mac OS X 10.6 or later, with all security settings left at the default (at a minimum).”

Reed tested how well the apps can detect merely present and active malware, and not how well each handles (i.e. isolates, removes) an infection.

The Mac AV apps that delivered the best results (table above) in Reed’s tests included a mix of free and commercial packages. As shown above, avast! Free Antivirus 7.0 and VirusBarrier 10.7.1 delivered the best results, detecting 100 percent of the active malware thrown at them.

Mac AntiVirus: Define “Better”

So, which is the best Mac antivirus app? The package I use, ClamXav, doesn’t test best, yet it’s fast, sophisticated (i.e. can be scheduled, automatically updates itself, etc.) and is free.

One should also consider the nature of the Mac virus threat — effectively zero. It probably won’t stay that way forever, so choosing an antivirus app is about hedging your bets.

Which is the best Mac antivirus app? Capable and free look pretty good…

What’s your take?

via MacFixIt

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6 Comments »

Freeway Pro 6 Goes Big on HTML 5 - FairerPlatform said:

[...] posts: — Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices — Manga Studio 5: New Tools, 64-bit, Multi-processor Enabled — Adobe Updates: Illustrator [...]

# 1 February 2013 at 11:20 am

Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12, Oracle Patches Available - FairerPlatform said:

[...] posts: — Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices — Whats New in iOS 6.1: Some Features, Lots of Security — Mac Antivirus: Intego Virus [...]

# 2 February 2013 at 1:44 pm

Mac Updates: Snapheal 2.2, Firefox 18.0.2, Opera 12.14 - FairerPlatform said:

[...] Related posts: — Mac App Store Productivity Sale: Week 2 — Mac Updates: OS X Server 2.2.1, evasi0n 1.0.0, Pandora 2.0.7 — Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12, Oracle Patches Available — Freeway Pro 6 Goes Big on HTML 5 — Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices [...]

# 6 February 2013 at 11:08 am

Apple Patches Java for Mac Security said:

[...] Patches Zero Day Flash Exploit — Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12, Oracle Patches Available — Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices — Mac Antivirus: Intego Virus Barrier, Net Barrier Save 30% — Mac Security: XProtect Update [...]

# 20 February 2013 at 12:27 am

Mac Apps: iAntivirus, TextWrangler, Chrome, Freeway said:

[...] what it’s worth, iAntivirus ranked near the bottom of the Fairer Platform’s look at the Best Mac Antivirus apps, scoring near the bottom of the table at detecting known Mac [...]

# 22 February 2013 at 12:14 am

Mac Security: Java for OS X, Flash, Evernote Updates [u] - FairerPlatform said:

[...] Patches Zero Day Flash Exploit — Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 12, Oracle Patches Available — Best Mac AntiVirus? You Have Choices — Mac Antivirus: Intego Virus Barrier, Net Barrier Save [...]

# 5 March 2013 at 1:45 pm