For the longest time, the Macintosh operating system has been way up there for safety and security. You just didn’t have to worry about malware because the Mac was the best antivirus for Mac that you ever needed.
And this is literally true, too. The MacOS does have its own inbuilt malware detection service.
What about antivirus for iPhone or the iPad? We’ve discussed this in a separate article, of course. Basically though, this is a bridge we need to cross right now. While a few antivirus apps do exist for the iPad and iPhone, even ones by actual major antivirus companies, even those companies concede that there simply are no viruses for the iPad or iPhone yet (save for jail-broken ones on rare occasion). Those apps at this time are only for people who want to be extra careful.
Back to the Mac what if your Mac infects someone else’s Windows PC?
There’s a small problem you need to face up to if you’re trying to live life on the Mac without antivirus.Now there are lots of Windows viruses out there. While they are unable to actually infect your Mac, they have no problem with treating your computer as a kind of temporary rest stop.You could easily get a Windows virus to just come set up camp on a Mac without actually infecting it. It’ll just wait there, for such a time that you connect your Mac to a Windows PC– over a network or something else. The moment that happens, the viruses will happily go infect the Windows computer. Everyone’s going to be angry at you for infecting them with your Mac. This would never happen if you had the best antivirus for Mac installed.
The cynical have always liked to say that the Mac is safer just because it is such a small and unrewarding target to the hackers. That isn’t really true though. The Mac OS was, and is safer, because it truly is a better-integrated system.
Some things have changed somewhat over the past few years though. Macintosh computers are more popular than ever (they often top Windows sales in the laptop department in places like Britain), and hackers are more motivated to top themselves these days than ever before. Hackers are so motivated these days that they’ve succeeded in placing malware on formidable military systems – on US Predator drones, for instance. You could say that it is only a matter of time before they find their way into your Mac. Apple has cautiously begun to recommend that you look for the best antivirus for Mac that you can.
There’s no point in being alarmist though. As often as you hear scary statistics about how there are half a million Windows viruses floating about in the ether, you do have to realize that about one in ten Windows users don’t use antivirus at all. They just practice good common sense. They don’t plug in flash drives that come from strangers or from people they know to be careless, they don’t open strange-looking e-mails, and they don’t download questionable stuff from questionable websites. Even Windows users who live life this way can stay away from antivirus software and still remain safe.
So should I get antivirus, or not?
Overwhelmingly, even as Apple tells users to look for the best antivirus for Mac, users simply don’t. They do absolutely nothing to keep all those evil viruses, trojans, worms and whatnot out of their systems. They act this way because mostly, they have heard of such a thing happening to anyone they know. And they have never experienced any downtime because of the carefree way in which they go about their lives.
Even Apple only recommends in a polite way, that you might want to consider antivirus. “Run an antivirus program if you find any suspicious files or applications, or if you notice any suspicious behavior on your computer.” is all they say. On Windows on the other hand, the recommendations more strident, shrill and panicky. You practically cannot live without it, is the message you get.
But seriously, should I or should I not get antivirus?
The simple answer would be, yes, you should. The more detailed answer is as follows.
First of all, there is the aforementioned problem that you could become a carrier for a Windows virus without even realizing it and infecting someone else’s Windows computer. As for the safety of your own computer, the thing is, that on the Mac, viruses are kind of a slowly building problem. They aren’t at the point right now that you need to be very worried about them.
Hackers really haven’t got their act together yet. And this is for two reasons. To begin with, yes, it’s more difficult for hackers to attack the Mac because the MacOS is better-designed. But good design can only go so far. There’s another part to it is – ever since Snow Leopard, MacOS has its own inbuilt malware detector (it’s a minimal level of protection, because Apple isn’t really serious about keeping its databases up-to-date. They don’t really keep up with the latest viruses out there) and Macs are only now becoming wildly popular.
But they get help from Mac users
Hackers are beginning to take your Mac seriously now. And they are looking for the low-hanging fruit first. That’s how the MacProtector and MacDefender virus got about. When you visited certain websites, you would get a bogus warning from the website that said that you had a virus (big lie!) and that you had to download MacProtector to save your computer (even bigger!).
Surprise, surprise – there is no virus until you actually download the stuff. While the MacOS really is a difficult operating system for hackers to break into, this kind of psychological trickery will always work. If those hackers can get you to personally download and install something by tricking you into believing that it’s legitimate, there’s nothing the best operating system can do. Only antivirus takes care of this kind of thing.
Sadly, those hackers really have gotten good at this kind of thing. They now offer fake media players, fake download managers and what-have-you for free. What can the Mac OS do if you choose to actually download something and install it yourself, not realizing that it’s fake?
See, here’s the other basic problem
There are many kinds of viruses, Trojans and other nasties out there that don’t actually need to install on your computer to do you grievous injury. They can just do their thing without installing on your computer. The MacOS is mostly difficult for hackers to break into because the moment anything tries to install on your computer, it tries to make sure that it has your permission. If the hackers come up with a virus that doesn’t need to install on your computer, there’s pretty much nothing that the MacOS can do.
And that’s exactly what the hackers have done. For instance, a lot of viruses for the Macintosh are all about just stealing your personal information – your Social Security Number, your credit card number. These kinds of viruses don’t need administrator privileges for anything like that.
Most people actually do get away using no antivirus
It’s true that they do. Most Windows users got by without antivirus at first, too. You can be sure that the hackers are hard at work today to flood the Internet with viruses that will begin to really take hold in a couple of years. If you don’t use antivirus now, you’ll probably be safe for some time. But it’s a strange kind of safety. You do know that they’re gunning for you. It’s only a matter of time.
But it doesn’t have to cost you
Things are going to get tougher and tougher for the Mac in the future starting with the next few months. The great thing is that antivirus software sells so widely for Windows that it kind of subsidizes things for the Mac.
Still, the best antivirus for Mac certainly is somewhat more expensive than what you would find on Windows. For instance, Kaspersky Internet Security 2012, a top brand, sells at $32 for a 3-user pack on Windows. The same thing on the Macintosh sells for $32 for a single-user pack. And that’s the way it is across the board.
Well, almost across the board, VirusBarrier which is often considered the most aggressively capable Mac antivirus software on the market, is priced smart. Intego, the company behind the product, has decided that a friendly pricing policy makes a great deal of sense in a budding market where no one is even sure they need the product yet. Their VirusBarrier Family Pack X6 allows you to install their product on 5 computers for around $30 or $40 (prices tend to fluctuate, but you can check it out).
Lots of people go with free antivirus. Many companies that make paid antivirus issue a stripped-down version for free. For most people even on virus-infested Windows, free antivirus works completely adequately. For Mac computers that don’t really have to deal with an out-of-control virus situation just yet, free antivirus really could do quite well.
For some though, it just makes no sense to pinch pennies here. If you were someone who wanted to watch every dollar you spent, you probably wouldn’t buy a Macintosh computer.
With that out of the way…
We’ll look at a few of the best antivirus for Mac (2011 and 2012) in the paid category shortly. But since free antivirus for the Mac can be pretty good too, you really owe it yourself to take a look at those once at least.
Sophos
Many antivirus makers will offer a free version in addition to their regular paid version. It’s their way of keeping the virus situation out there under control. Sophos is the top name in antivirus on the Macintosh platform. Certainly, they have a proper paid version. Luckily though, their free version is pretty great too. They do a great job not nagging you to upgrade to their paid product, and the antivirus itself is user-friendly and quite complete. You can scan networked drives, it’s very lightweight on your system, and Sophos updates your antivirus installation all the time. Try free Sophos here.
ClamXav
Also in the free department, is this wonderful product that’s a little hard to use. If you’re used to a glossy GUI that makes everything easy to use, you’ll find ClamXav a bit daunting. In reality though, it’s very powerful, it’s reasonably easy to use, and it’s very resource-light on your computer. You’ll find even when it’s doing a lot of heavy-duty scanning, that it doesn’t bog your system down. The company updates your virus definitions (that’s the heads-up list of potential threats and that the company sends to your computer) and if you like nerd stuff, you get a lot of material here to sink its teeth into. You can try ClamXav here.
And then there are the paid ones
Of course, as you might expect, most of the real action is in the paid department. While the free products can be pretty good, understandably, these companies reserve some of their best firepower for the paid stuff.
Let’s start with Intego VirusBarrier X6, a product that is widely considered to be on the cutting edge performance-wise and in pricing. We’ve already gushed over the pricing of course; let’s look at how it performs now.
VirusBarrier is a great product to have because they give you complete, all round protection. You get complete antivirus protection, of course. This product also includes protection against spyware and adware on top (for a full explanation of how security software works and what all these terms mean do check elsewhere on this website). The product is rounded off with a powerful firewall, a pleasing and friendly user interface and excellent tech support. Just to give you an idea of how powerful the protection is, VirusBarrier isn’t like most other antivirus packages that just go into action when an obvious virus actually begins to do some harm. It looks for weird behavioral patterns – behavior analysis as they call it – that’ll actually pick up anything that is amiss.
If you really want antivirus that turns your computer into a fortress, this is what you need to get. It goes so far with the super-cop act that it has extensions or plug-ins for every browser you install on your computer. It supervises all your browser activity nonstop for any signs of a virus. It’s simple to use, and it costs about $32 a year to buy. If there’s a problem you have to bring up, you could say that this level of security does come with a degree of resource drain. The antivirus work so hard, it kind of slows the computer down somewhat.
If you want the kind of security that Kaspersky offers without that kind of computer slow-down, ESET is for you. It costs about the same as Kaspersky, but it is a superbly user-friendly program, it’s light on your system, spectacularly fast and it’s just beautiful to look at.
If there’s one thing that all of the antivirus packages above share, it’s this – they run all the time once installed, and they are out looking for threats all the time. If you feel that your situation doesn’t really quite call for that level of watchfulness, but you would still like the best antivirus for Mac installed on your computer, MacScan at $25 a year is the stuff you’re looking for. Unlike all the other packages above, MacScan is switched off by default. You only turn it on and run it when you feel that something might be wrong. This might be a wonderful thing for a safe computer user. The other hyper-vigilant antivirus packages can often go unnecessarily over-the-top scaring you with all kinds of nonexistent threat warnings all the time.
So there you go. Our little introduction to the best antivirus for Mac. Read on to learn more about how the best antivirus for Mac works.