Families looking to manage antivirus software on a whole household of Macs for free won't find a better way than with Sophos Home, but its malware protection is far from perfect. Compare Sophos vs. Avast If you want a reliable IT Management Software product for your business you have to make time to evaluate different solutions. It doesn’t have to be challenging, and can be as straightforward as matching their functions in a table like the one below.

• Which Cheese Is Better For Mac And Cheese
• Sophos Antivirus For Mac
• Which Is Better For Mac Safari Or Chrome
• Is Pop Or Imap Better For Mac Mail
• Sophos Home For Mac

• Pros

  Remote management. Detected many Windows malware samples in hands-on test. Decent phishing protection. Simple parental control. Free.

• Cons

  No scores from independent labs. Limited content filter missed some racy sites. Very slow full scan. Phishing score lags Windows edition.

• 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.

PCs get viruses, Macs don't. You know it's true—you 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.

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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 window—just 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).

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

Which Cheese Is Better For Mac And Cheese

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.

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.

Avast Free Antivirus scans for security and performance issues and tells you how to fix things instantly. It protects you in real-time by analyzing unknown files before they get to you. So relax: With Avast, you’re running the most trusted antivirus out there. Avast Free Antivirus raises the bar on security with real-time protection, intelligent threat-detection, and added security for your network, passwords, and browser. Easy to install and easy to use, no other free antivirus comes close. Download Avast antivirus and anti-spyware protection for your PC, Mac and Android. Protect your devices with the best free antivirus on the market. Toggle SlidingBar Area. Quick heal free antivirus for pc. Best free antivirus programs for Windows and Mac. Published by Sam Cook on January 9, 2018 in Antivirus. The Android version of Avast Antivirus Free has far fewer options, but still maintains a high level of free device security and protection. Best free antivirus programs for Mac.

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So Mac invulnerability to malware is a myth, at least according to security researchers from Kaspersky Lab. And although such a blunt statement may be a blow to the ego of some Mac users, it remains true. Security researchers from all walks have long argued that it was only a matter of time before the Mac became popular enough that virus, malware, and spyware makers would come calling, and the recent Flashback scare has only served as a reminder that overconfidence precedes carelessness. Especially when it comes to technology.

The Flashback flare-up happened less than a year after another malware spike, which came in the form of fake antivirus app Mac Defender. Though neither incident ended up infecting every single Mac, they both showed that malware on the Mac is ever-so-slowly inching its way into our public consciousness. 'Market share brings attacker motivation,' Kaspersky Lab told the press last month, and Mac market share is definitely on the rise.

Is it time to begin installing antivirus software on our Macs? We leave that up to you to decide for yourself, but given the spike in questions we've been receiving about which antivirus software is the best, we thought we'd take a look at a handful of the most well-known apps out there for Mac users. Your mileage may vary, but here are our impressions of five different antivirus packages after installing and using each one. In no particular order:

Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Mac

Cost: $39.95 per year
Free trial: 30 days

Kaspersky's antivirus software was easy to install and pretty robust. The main interface (pictured above) is simple enough to use: push the big green button to begin scanning your stuff. The green button doesn't always stay green though—when I began using the software, it started out orange with a note saying 'Databases are obsolete':

I didn't find this to be particularly welcoming, and it might alarm a less experienced user upon first launching the program, as there are no instructions about what that means or how to fix it. (This was remedied by updating to the latest definitions from within the app.)

Aside from this, though, the software is relatively straightforward. Like most antivirus programs, you can change your security level depending on how strict you want the scans to be, tweak notification settings for when suspicious files are found, and can even change the skin of the software (thank goodness). You can also have the software scan for a particular type of malware, so if you only want to look for trojans instead of adware or auto-dialers, you can do so. And of course, users can create a whitelist of exclusions. Kaspersky's offering comes with an uninstaller on the disk image when you download it from the website, which is also easy to use if you should choose to get rid of it. Everything worked as expected when we used this one, though depending on your personal needs, you may not want to pay $39.95 per year for it.

Intego VirusBarrier X6

Cost: $49.95 per year
Free trial: 30 days

Avast Security Pro (for Mac) adds ransomware protection and Wi-Fi intruder detection to the features found in Avast's free antivirus, but these additions don't merit its high price. The myth that Macs can't suffer viruses, Trojans, or other types of malware attack is busted. Pcmag avast free for mac. Mar 15, 2018  Since Avast's acquisition of AVG a couple years ago, this product and Avast Security (for Mac) are now, if not siblings, at least cousins. On the PC side, the two free antivirus products are. Avast Security (for Mac), Avira Free Antivirus for Mac, and Sophos Home Free (for Mac) are totally free for personal use, although Sophos technically limits you to three devices, macOS or Windows. Jan 12, 2018  Avast Security Pro (for Mac) adds ransomware protection and Wi-Fi intruder detection to the features found in Avast's free antivirus, but these additions don't merit its high price. Avast Free Antivirus gives you more than many competing commercial products. On top of excellent antivirus protection, it adds a network security scanner, a password manager, browser protection.

Intego's VirusBarrier definitely wins the award for 'The Most Buttons.' There's just a lot going on when you launch this software, and for the average user, it might be a bit overwhelming. You may notice in the screenshot above that it says my filters are 166 days old, but clicking on it just displays a new message saying I can't download new ones—this is confusing and perhaps somewhat alarming to someone trying to stay protected from malware, and left me dinging Intego for usability points.

Aside from this, Intego's software scans new files in real time and puts a traffic indicator in your menubar if you're the type who likes to monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic. VirusBarrier also has a 'fraudulent website protection' option for cookies, and even offers a way to hide your browser info and last site visited from other sites trying to track your browsing behavior. Like Kaspersky's software, Intego's also comes with an easy-to-find uninstaller. Overall, we felt fine about Intego, though the sheer number of available options left us feeling a bit overwhelmed. For $49.95 per year, it could be worth your while if you're looking for a very complete solution that lets you lock down on everything but the kitchen sink, but if all you want is simplicity, you aren't likely to find it here.

F-Secure Antivirus for Mac

Cost: $39.99 per year
Free trial: 30 days with campaign code AVMAGL

F-Secure wins the award for requiring the 'Most Hoops For Users' to jump through in order to download the trial—not only do you have to enter a campaign code to obtain the trial in the first place, you then have to wait for e-mail confirmation (the first one, that is). Then you have to click a link to confirm, which then sends you a second e-mail confirmation that requires to you to click another link to download. Annoying, F-Secure. Just plain annoying.

Regardless, we found F-Secure's antivirus product to be very straightforward and fairly simplistic—but in a good way. This is no Intego—there aren't 94 buttons on the main screen for you to choose from. F-Secure's software allows you to do basic tasks like scan for viruses, block and unblock network traffic, and look at your virus/spyware history. It also turns on your OS X firewall by default (though you can turn it off again in your settings if you'd like) and… well, that's pretty much it.

After using Kaspersky's and Intego's solutions, F-Secure's seemed promising when it came to being straightforward and simple. The offering doesn't overwhelm the user and it's not hard to figure out how to use it. But I can't in good faith endorse F-Secure's offering given my experiences when installing and running it. I installed this software twice on two separate computers and had nonstop bad experiences—it completely debilitated my machine one time to the point where trying to open a Finder window was an hour-long task with nonstop beachballs. (One Mac Genius I spoke to even believed the SSD in my Mac had been corrupted because the performance was suddenly so poor.)

Sophos Antivirus For Mac

The second time wasn't much better; on a completely clean machine, installing F-Secure slowed things down noticeably and beachballs were frequent. Luckily, uninstalling the software appeared to restore my computers back to their actual, usable states. (The uninstaller can be found in Applications > F-Secure after you install it initially.) You may have different experiences with this one, but I plan to stay far away.

Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition

Cost: Free!

Sophos' antivirus software was the most simple of all the packages we tried. It really just does one thing: scan for viruses and malware, and it automatically downloads new virus definitions. You can customize your scans and manage the files that have been set aside in quarantine, but if you want network traffic scanners or skinning capabilities, this is not the right place to look.

This software is completely free—there's no yearly fee or registration required—so there's not much to complain about when it comes to its functionality (or lack thereof, depending on what you're looking for). It's basically the polar opposite of Intego and Kaspersky's software, and is priced as such. If you're looking for the simplest antivirus software from a trusted company, this is probably it.

Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac

Cost: Free!

Avast was the only antivirus software we tested that didn't involve using a 'real' installer (it just requires drag-and-drop installation). We would categorize Avast's antivirus software as more feature-rich than Sophos, but still less complex than the first two (Kaspersky and Intego)—it might be roughly on par with F-Secure when it comes to breadth of functionality.

Which Is Better For Mac Safari Or Chrome

Avast can scan your full system, local volumes, network volumes, just your home directory, or a custom mix of folders. (As usual, it also auto-downloads new virus definitions.) It automatically displays pop-ups whenever it decides to warn you about something (below) or when there are new virus definitions and important messages:

Luckily you can turn this off if you want—and I did, because I received the above message just about every time my mail client tried to retrieve e-mail—but it can be handy if you want to be alerted for unauthorized connections.

Aside from this, the software is very straightforward. Again, it's free, so there's not much room to complain if Avast's solution strikes you as a little light. Still, for 'regular' users or people who simply don't need/want a ton of options, we liked Avast—it offers slightly more than Sophos for the same price, but we must note that even though it's free, you still have to register your version of Avast within 30 days of installation. Uninstallation can be done through the software itself (under the 'avast!' menu) or by just deleting the app from your Applications folder, which should also remove the daemon and supporting scripts (check out this forum thread for more information). I really liked Avast when it came to simple-to-use bad-guy protection, and it's hard to beat free.

Conclusion

We're not arguing that Mac users have to install antivirus software if they want to avoid the zombie malware apocalypse. Infection numbers—even for Flashback—are still relatively low when compared against the global number of Mac users. However, we also don't think it's wise to pretend that OS X is completely immune to attacks. It's not—we know it, you (hopefully) know it, and security researchers know it. Even if you feel comfortable navigating the scary old Internet yourself, you may want to consider setting up your less-experienced friends and family members who just can't help themselves when it comes to playing Java games online or opening random e-mail attachments from China.

Keep in mind, though, that malware attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated. In the case of Flashback, the infection was spread via hijacked WordPress sites thanks to a vulnerability in the blog software. This means that trusted blogs visited by Mac users could have been used to spread the infection, reinforcing the disturbing truth that infections don't only happen by visiting shady websites or opening unidentified files. If you worry about the possibility that your own favorite sites could transmit something questionable to your machine through an unpatched vulnerability, adding an extra layer of protection between you and the Internet is worth considering.

Is Pop Or Imap Better For Mac Mail

We're sure there are other antivirus packages that you like, too. Let us know in the comments what your favorites are, or if you have additional tips to add for Mac users trying to stay safe.

Sophos Home For Mac

Update: This article originally said Symantec didn't offer a trial for its Norton Antivirus software. That is inaccurate and we will update this article with our thoughts on Norton as soon as we can.