Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac stands out in a somewhat crowded field of Mac antivirus apps because it doesn't just scan your Mac's files and folders on demand, but it does it quietly in the background.
$0.00
Sophos antivirus for mac free download - Sophos Home, AVG AntiVirus for Mac, Avast Free Mac Security, and many more programs. For many years, Mac owners scoffed at the idea of installing antivirus protection. Those are Windows problems, right? While it's true that Windows is a much more popular. Feb 20, 2015 I recommend avoiding Sophos, as it can actually increase a Mac's vulnerability, as described here and here. 3rd party antivirus apps are not needed to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as the user practices safe computing, as described in the following link.
For years, Mac users basked in the mystique of virus-free computing. It wasn't true, alas, and as time goes on we see more and more Mac-specific malware attacks. The situation may not be nearly as bad as for Window or Android, but prudence still dictates that you install antivirus protection on your Macs as well. Avast Security offers Macs protection against malware along with advanced features including a password manager and a network security scanner, all for a cost of exactly nothing.
Installation went quickly, though I did find I had to separately activate the password manager and the Online Security browser extension from the Tools page. You'll also find Avast's SecureLine VPN on that page, but it's not free like the others. When you click to activate, you get a choice of signing up for $2.99 per month or starting a 30-day trial.
The product's spacious main window features a large status indicator centered in an otherwise-empty white region, with a menu down the left side. It's a very different appearance from Avast Free Antivirus on Windows, which uses pops of purple and green on a dark gray background.
Pricing and OS Support
Like Bitdefender and Kaspersky, Avast supports macOS versions back to 10.9 Mavericks. If you have an antique Mac that for some reason can't even run Mavericks, consider ESET Cyber Security (for Mac), ProtectWorks, or ClamXAV (for Mac) all of which support versions from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on. At the other end of the spectrum, Avira, Trend Micro, and Symantec require macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) or better.
Like Sophos and Avira, Avast offers full antivirus protection for free. Avast Security Pro (for Mac) costs $59.99 per year for one license or $69.99 for three. The Pro edition adds ransomware protection and real-time notification when new devices connect to your network. The free edition is strictly for non-commercial use; in a business setting, you must pay up.
Good Malware Protection Scores
When reviewing a Windows antivirus utility, I report how it scored with four independent antivirus testing labs. The very best products earn top scores from all four labs. But even if no test results exist, I can run my own hands-on tests using real-world malware and malware-hosting URLs.
It took years to develop my hands-on tools and tests for Windows. Most of them don't carry over to the macOS platform. Hence lab results become extremely important for my Mac antivirus reviews. Two of the labs I follow, AV-Test Institute and AV-Comparatives, test Mac antivirus, and Avast participates with one of them.
Experts at AV-Comparatives test Mac antivirus products using the latest macOS malware. They also evaluate each product's ability to detect Windows malware. Why? While a Trojan written for Windows wouldn't run on a Mac, the Mac could serve as a carrier.
Avast managed 99.9 percent protection against Mac malware. That's very goodâbetter than most. However, Bitdefender and Kaspersky exhibited 100 percent protection. In the Windows malware test, Avast detected 100 percent of the samples. Most competing products also took 100 percent. However, Webroot only caught 75 percent, and Intego Mac Internet Security X9 got just 18 percent. Like most tested products, Avast received certification from AV-Comparatives for Mac antivirus protection.
Having one certification is good; having two is better. Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Sophos are among the products that received certifications from both labs for Mac malware protection.
Scan Choices
Avast offers several scans to improve your Mac's security. A full scan on the Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch that I use for testing took 14.5 minutes, just a hair over Intego's 14 minutes, and quicker than the 18 minutes required by Avira. The average for recent products is 24 minutes, so Avast proved quite speedy. Norton is the current speed champ, completing a full scan in 10 minutes.
There's a separate scan for removable volumes, though you can configure the full scan to include them. I scanned a thumb drive containing my Windows malware collection and found that it quarantined 85 percent of them. For comparison, Avira detected 82 percent of these, while Sophos Home (for Mac) wiped out every single one.
There's no predefined quick scan, which makes sense given the speed of the full scan. The custom scan settings confused me, though. As with the full scan, you can add file locations to exclude from scanning, and configure it to scan Time Machine backups. But the full scan's settings include those options, and also let you include removable volumes and network volumes, while the custom scan's settings do not. Puzzling.
You can schedule a daily, weekly, or monthly scan if desired. Settings for a scheduled scan include two additional choices. You can set it to skip scanning if your device is running on batteries, and you can have it wake from sleep if necessary, to perform its scheduled scan. Avira Free Antivirus for Mac not only offers scheduled scanning, it defaults to a weekly scan with no effort on your part. Sophos skips scheduled scanning, relying instead on real-time protection.
Network Security Scan
The final scan choice doesn't look for malware. Rather, it collects information about all the devices on your network and flags any security problems. On my own network, the scan finished in just under three minutes.
The scanner correctly reported that my main router has an open port that could theoretically become a point of attack. It's true that the port is open, as my ISP uses it to run remote diagnostics when necessary. But that function requires a key that only the ISP has.
More interestingly, it found serious problems with a network storage device (fortunately, one that I'm not currently using). Not only does this device have numerous open ports, it's vulnerable to a buffer overrun attack. Avast advised updating the firmware; I just unplugged it. Download avast for mac os.
The report also serves as a list of everything that's connected to your network, identifying each by name and type. It's similar to the output of Bitdefender Home Scanner. With both products, I found devices with names like unknown6542990b6483ânot much help! Bitdefender includes an option to edit the name and type, and it remembers your edits in subsequent scans. I'd like to see that ability in Avast.
Excellent Phishing Protection in Chrome and Firefox
In the Windows realm, one thing that differentiates Avast's premium product is better protection against phishing sites, those fraudulent sites that imitate secure sites and try to steal your login credentials. The free Windows edition scored very poorly, while the premium edition did an extremely good job. Based on initial round of testing, the Mac product's phishing protection, both free and Pro, seemed to match that of the free Windows product, meaning it's not very good.
I learned later that Avast's phishing protection is not fully functional in Safari. The developers are working on making it completely browser-independent. In the meantime, they advise using Chrome or Firefox. Norton was also having problems during my original test, so I tossed those results and started fresh.
My phishing protection test uses URLs reported as fraudulent, but not yet verified. Typically, these are only a few hours old. That's important, because phishing sites are ephemeral. Once they've been identified and blacklisted, the fraudsters just create new ones.
I simultaneously launch each URL in Safari on the Mac and in a browser protected by long-time antiphishing champ Symantec Norton Security Premium. I also launch each in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, relying on the browser's built-in protection. If any of the five browsers throw an error message, I discard the URL. A true phishing fraud masquerades as a secure site and tries to capture your login credentials. Any URL that doesn't match that profile also gets junked.
I've written a Windows-based tool that handles launching URLs and capturing results. On the Mac, I copy and paste each URL into Safari and manually record the result. When I have enough data, I dump the five reports into Excel for comparison.
The malefactors that perpetrate these phishing frauds are clever. They're always devising new techniques to get past security software. That being the case, I report results not as hard figures but as the difference between the product under test and the others.
Tested using Safari's incomplete phishing protection, Avast's detection rate lagged Norton's by 32 percent, and Norton itself was having a bad day. All three browsers soundly drubbed Avast. When I retested using Chrome, Avast tied with Norton and beat the detection rates of the three browsers. That's impressive. Of the Mac security products I've tested, only Bitdefender did better, beating Norton by 5 percentage points.
While phishing is browser-agnostic, phishing protection is not. Bitdefender beat Norton by 5 percentage points, but its Windows cousin more than doubled that gap. Even Symantec Norton Security Deluxe (for Mac) didn't detect many frauds that its Windows edition caught.
Site Rating and Do Not Track
Like McAfee AntiVirus Plus (for Mac), Avira, Trend Micro, and several others, Avast marks up results in popular search engines with green for safe, red for dangerous, and gray for unknown. You can click to vote a page up or down. Simple!
Clicking the Online Safety toolbar button displays the status for the current page. It also lists all the elements on the site that can track your online activity, including analytics, social media, ad trackers, and more. By default, it doesn't do anything, but you're free to block any tracker or category. Websites are free to ignore the official Do Not Track header sent by your browser, but Avast's active Do Not Track feature has teeth. Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac offers a similar active Do Not Track feature.
Digging into the settings for Online Safety reveals a hidden gem: SiteCorrect. If you mistype a site name, this feature offers to change to the correct name. You can even set it to automatically make the fix, with no prompt. However, in testing, I couldn't tease it into action. I tried pyapal.com, pcmga.com, whitehous.gov, wallmart.com, and many others, with no reaction from SiteCorrect.
Basic Password Manager
Like Avast's Windows antivirus, this product includes a password manager. Where the Windows product invites you to install on Android, the Mac one suggests adding password management to your iPhone. On Windows, the password manager is integrated with the antivirus; under macOS, it's a separate app. Avast cleanup pro premium key for mac.
There's no limit on the number of devices, and you can sync your passwords between them all, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Avast doesn't keep your passwords in the cloud. Rather, it uses your Avast account to authorize syncing data that's stored locally on your devices.
Once you've enabled syncing on a device, that device becomes an authenticator for adding more devices. The new device displays a numeric code, and the existing device gets a notification with the same code. If the numbers match, just click to approve. What if you lose all your devices? On installation, Avast sends an email with a recovery link; don't lose that email!
On each of your devices, you create a master password to protect the local password stash. The master passwords need not be the same, but who'd want the confusion of making them different? Avast offers advice on creating a strong password, with a color-coded line representing the strength of what you've typed. It's not easy to get all the way to green, but Avast doesn't require it. In fact, it accepted 'Password' as a master password.
Avast offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. When you log in to a site, the extension offers to save your credentials. If you come back to the site, it fills your saved credentials. Clicking the key icon in one of the fields brings up a menu showing all the credentials you've saved. And it handles two-page logins like what Google uses.
Avast doesn't use the typical menu of logins attached to its toolbar button. Rather, you click the button and launch the main application. Unlike the Windows edition, this is a separate app, not integrated with the main antivirus. Its main window is seriously tall and skinny, like something you'd find on a smartphone, and you have only limited control over its size. Clicking an item opens its details, with a link to open the site itself.
You can also use the password manager to sync and share secure notes between your devices. These are simple, unformatted text snippets, suitable for saving such things as locker combinations and non-digital passwords.
The left-rail menu offers simple icons to manage passwords and secure notes, and one to bring up the password generator. By default, it generates 18-character passwords using all character types. You can set the length anywhere from four to 30 characters using a slider.
Avast analyzes the strength of your master password when you first create it, but not when you update it. Avast Pro Antivirus on Windows can analyze your passwords, flagging any weak or duplicate ones. The free Windows edition used to include this feature, but it was recently enhanced and redefined as a Pro-only feature.
This password manager handles all the basic tasks and no more. Fancy features like secure sharing, two-factor authentication, and password inheritance aren't here. But you do get it along with the antivirus, at no charge, so if it does enough for you, go ahead and use it.
Worth a Look
AV-Comparatives certified Avast Security as an effective Mac antivirus. Impressively, it offers a network scanner and password manager, features often reserved for full security suites. On the other hand, the password manager handles basic functions onlyânothing advanced. And while Avast earned great stores in my hands-on antiphishing test, that function currently works well in Chrome and Firefox, but not Safari. But the pros outweigh the cons. If you're looking for free Mac antivirus protection, give it a try, along with Sophos and Avira, and see which you like best.
For truly top-notch Mac security, you'll need to lay out some cash. Our Editors' Choice products in this realm are Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac. Both received certification from two labs. Both scored well in our hands-on antiphishing test. Bitdefender's AutoPilot mode means you can set it and forget it. And Kaspersky goes above and beyond feature-wise, with full-scale parental control, protection against webcam peeping, a network attack blocker, and more.
Bottom Line: Avast Security (for Mac) delivers effective malware protection along with unusual bonus features. Phishing protection only works well in Chrome and Firefox, but this free utility is still worth a look.
Avast Vs Sophos AntivirusPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.blog comments powered by Disqus
$0.00
PCs get viruses, Macs don't. You know it's trueâyou saw it on TV! Alas, the reality is a bit different from that. Yes, Windows is more popular with malware coders around the world, because it offers more of an attack surface. You'd be nuts to go without antivirus protection on your Windows boxes. But Macs need protection too, especially from ransomware. If you're willing to protect your Macs with antivirus but don't want to lay out cash for that purpose, consider Sophos Home Free (for Mac), especially if you need to manage protection for others.
The big business for Sophos is Enterprise-level antivirus systems, where an IT administrator controls all the local installations. It's no surprise that the consumer edition works the same way. To get started with Sophos, you register an account online. From the online console you can install and manage protection on three devices, whether they run macOS or Windows. If you need more than three and don't want to set up another free account on a separate email, you must upgrade to Sophos Home Premium (for Mac). The Premium edition lets you manage 10 devices, and adds useful security-related features.
Sophos installed in a flash on the MacBook Air I use for testing. The product was ready to use, including all the latest antivirus signature updates, within a minute or two.
With Sophos Home Free on Windows, you see the small, simple window of a local antivirus agent, with all logging and configuration happening online. The Mac edition goes a step beyond. It has no main windowâjust a tiny pop-up invoked by clicking its icon. The pop-up reports security status, lists recent activity, and serves as a progress display when you're running a scan. From its menu you can manage your devices, view all activity, or configure preferences; selecting any of these three sends you to the online dashboard.
The Windows antivirus always runs a full scan, while the default on a Mac is a quick scan. You can check a box to make it a full scan, and you should do that at least once after installation, to wipe out any preexisting malware conditions.
Pricing and OS Support
It's true that the number of malware attacks on macOS devices pales next to the huge number aimed at Windows, so you might be tempted to skip antivirus on the Mac. Why invest in protection you might not need? But installing Sophos on your personal Macs requires no investment beyond a few minutes of your time. Avast, Avira, and AVG also offer free antivirus protection for the Mac. Avira Free Antivirus for Mac, in particular, has no restrictions on number of installations and doesn't require that you register.
For comparison, non-free macOS antivirus utilities typically go for about $40 per year, or $60 for three licenses. McAfee AntiVirus Plus (for Mac) takes a different approach. Your $59.99 subscription lets you install protection on every Mac in your household, as well as any devices running Windows, Android, or iOS.
Apple makes keeping your operating system updated really easy, whether it's iOS or macOS. Most Mac users migrate to the latest as soon as it's available. For those lagging just a little, Sophos supports macOS versions from El Capitan (10.11) to the latest. Avira also required El Capitan, while Avast Security (for Mac) and AVG go back to Yosemite (10.10).
If you're stuck using an old Mac that can't handle the latest updates, you may need a commercial antivirus. Webroot is compatible with versions back to Lion (10.7). That's impressive, but ProtectWorks AntiVirus (for Mac) goes even farther, with support for Snow Leopard (10.6) and later.
Online Dashboard
Other than real-time protection and antivirus scans, everything about this product takes place in the online console. Clicking Manage Devices, Show All Activity, or Preferences from the menu takes you to the console. From any computer, Windows or Mac, you can log into the console online and install Sophos Free (provided you haven't used up your three licenses).
Avast Free Antivirus For Mac
Clicking an existing device from the console brings up activities and settings for that device. In the free edition, only Antivirus Protection and Web Protection are enabled. If you want Ransomware Protection, Privacy Protection, and Malicious Traffic Detection, you'll have to upgrade to Premium.
Settings are almost identical on Windows and macOS installations. The one significant difference is the feature called Download Reputation. On Windows devices, this feature works to double-check files that the regular real-time protection system doesn't catch. It checks each download against an online reputation database that considers the source website, content, and feedback from other protected computers. If the reputation is bad, Sophos offers to kill the download. That feature doesn't appear in the macOS edition.
No Test Results From the Labs
If you're looking for a new computer, you probably peruse PCMag's reviews to find out which one scores best in various feature areas. I do something similar when reviewing antivirus utilities, checking results from the big independent testing labs. I follow four labs that regularly publish test results for Windows antivirus utilities, and two of those also cover Mac antivirus.
When I first put it to the test, Sophos held Mac certification from AV-Comparatives. In fact, all the products in my initial round of Mac antivirus reviews had at least one certification.
Unfortunately, Sophos doesn't appear in current reports from either AV-Comparatives or AV-Test Institute. As you can see from the chart, that's true for about half the products I've reviewed. It's not a reflection on the products that don't appear. The test labs regularly shuffle the sample sets for their reports. But the absence of independent certification does make it hard for me to determine whether a Mac antivirus utility is effective.
Bitdefender, Intego Mac Internet Security X9, and Trend Micro earned certification from both labs, and took top scores. Kaspersky came close to perfect marks, but lost a half-point for Performance, from AV-Test.
Scanning and Scheduling
I always advise running a full scan after installing any antivirus utility, to make sure there's no malware lurking on the system. After that initial full scan, you can probably rely on real-time protection to handle any new attacks. If you're at all worried, you can schedule a full or quick scan for any day of the week, just as with the Windows edition.
When I last tested this utility, it ran a full scan in 20 minutes, a little better than average for scan time on this Mac test system. I don't know what changed, but this time around that full scan took more than two hours. A second scan took just as long. That's longer than any recent product, though ESET did require an hour and a half. At the quick end of the scale, Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (for Mac) only needed two and a half minutes to complete its full scan, and Trend Micro did the job in 10 minutes.
I still advise a full scan after installing Sophos, but perhaps one time is enough. That full scan did detect malware hiding in odd places like the trash and some cache folders, including quarantine folders left over from long-deleted installations of other products.
Malware written to attack Windows machines can't affect Macs, and vice versa. Even so, most Mac antivirus tools also wipe out any Windows malware they find. That eliminates the faint possibility that your Mac might act as a carrier, passing malware along to Windows boxes on your network. Sophos is among those products that aim to kill off any Windows malware they see.
To test this feature, I copied my Windows malware samples to a thumb drive and mounted it on the Mac. Sophos immediately started popping up notifications about threats blocked. For known threats, the pop-up came with just a Close button; pop-ups for lower-risk PUAs offered a choice, Close or Clean. I always clicked Clean.
This deluge of pop-ups went on for at least 10 minutes, totaling vastly more notifications than the actual number of samples. I could see some of the same ones showing up over and over. When the pop-up storm finally subsided, Sophos had removed 86 percent of the Windows malware. That's pretty good, but when last tested it caught 100 percent of the then-current sample set. Webroot also whacked 100 percent of those samples.
As noted, Sophos started scanning the contents of the USB drive as soon as I mounted it. If you want to launch a scan of any folder, including folders on a removable drive, you can Control+Click and choose Scan with Sophos Home from the menu.
Decent Phishing Protection
It's possible to craft a website that drops malware on every visitor, or performs other dirty deeds. However, doing so isn't easy, and the result tends to be OS-specific. It's a lot easier to build a phishing website and just wait for saps to hand you their security credentials. A phishing site duplicates the appearance of a secure site such as a bank, a gaming site, or even an online dating site. It looks totally legit, unless you notice the wrong URL in the address bar or some other sign recognizing a phishing scam can be tough. And phishing is completely platform-agnostic. If you enter your username and password, they go straight into the hot little hands of the scammer. In most cases, the fraudulent site passes your login along to the real thing, so you don't even know you've been pwned.
Unlike most Mac antivirus products, Sophos doesn't rely on a browser add-on to filter out malicious and fraudulent URLs. It does it work below the browser level, so it works even if you've chosen an off-brand browser.
There's one slightly awkward side effect of this browser-independent technology. If the fraudulent site uses HTTPS, Sophos can't replace the page with a warning. When this happens on Windows, the browser displays an error message and Sophos tells you what happened with a pop-up. On the Mac, you just see an error message. I had to dig into the activity log to identify which errors reflected blocking a secure URL and which were just plain errors.
Interestingly, the two Sophos editions didn't quite come up with the same results. The macOS edition missed some fraudulent pages that the Windows edition caught. It also caught a few that the Windows edition missed, but not nearly as many.
Sophos detected 82 percent of the verified phishing URLs, which is decent but not stellar. It beat Firefox and Internet Explorer, but lagged seven percentage points behind Chrome. Tested simultaneously, the Windows edition managed 91 percent detection.
Phishing websites are platform-independent, but clearly phishing protection needn't be. It's common for a Mac antivirus to lag behind its Windows equivalent in this test. However, there are exceptions. McAfee and Webroot scored precisely the same as their Windows equivalents, with 100 percent and 97 percent detection respectively.
Porous Web Content Filtering
As with the Windows edition, Sophos offers a very simple parental control web content filter, managed from the online console. Filtering is by device, with no option to exempt certain user accounts. For each of 28 content categories, you can choose to block all access, or to just warn that proceeding to the site is inadvisable and will be logged.
I tried connecting with a few dozen raunchy sites. To my surprise, several got past the filter, including some that Sophos caught on Windows. I did find that since my last review, Sophos added the ability to filter unwanted HTTPS websites. However, it can't display its usual warning for these, and doesn't pop up a notification the way it does on Windows. A blocked HTTPS porn page just causes an error message in the browser.
As with the Windows edition, if you choose to warn about inappropriate sites rather than block them, Sophos doesn't handle HTTPS sites. I had no trouble connecting with HTTPS porn sites. In this mode, a tech-savvy youngster could connect through a secure anonymizing proxy and completely evade all parental control and monitoring. The limited parental control system offered by Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac is also foiled by anonymizing proxies.
On Windows, content filtering only works in supported browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera). I found that I could ignore the filter completely by browsing with Vivaldi. On the Mac, the filter seems to be browser-independent. At least, it blocked pages in Safari, Chrome, and Vivaldi.
If you really want parental control served up with your Mac antivirus, Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac is your best bet. It includes content filtering, time scheduling, and more. As for the limited, porous content filter in Sophos, it's not worth your time.
Free and Easy
Sophos Home Free has shrunk its Mac edition down to a menu bar button with a tiny pop-up window. All the settings and logs reside online. Alas, the independent labs no longer include it in testing, so it's hard to be sure of its effectiveness. It earns a decent score in our phishing protection test, and detects most (but not all) of our Windows malware samples. The addition of a parental control content filter looks like a bonus, until you see that it has numerous problems.
Sophos Home Antivirus
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac earned certification from both independent testing labs, and both offer features beyond basic antivirus. Bitdefender marks dangerous links in search results and protects your sensitive documents against ransomware attack. Kaspersky goes full-on security suite, with network defense, privacy protection, parental control, and more. Bitdefender and Kaspersky are our Editors' Choice picks for Mac antivirus protection. If you just can't justify paying for Mac antivirus, look at Avast Security (for Mac) or Avira Free Antivirus for Mac. These two earned certification from both labs, though not with the very highest scores.
Bottom Line: Sophos Home Free (for Mac) keeps configuration to a minimum, but doesn't have independent test scores to verify its accuracy. It can be a good choice for protecting your Macs at no cost.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |