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It's time to do the right thing.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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Antivirus software for OS X: Why you need it, and why you should care


March 19, 2006


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2006, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2006, The Post-Standard

   Should you join the Windows crowd and start worrying about viruses on your OS X Macintosh?
   The answer is "yes," but the question needs to be restated before you'll understand what I'm trying to say.
   Even though there are 200,000 Windows viruses, most Windows users do not have effective anti-virus software. That's Microsoft's guess, not mine, so I'll have to believe it. The folks who designed the flaws into Windows and left it vulnerable to such easy attack would know a clueless Windows user if they ran into one. And they must have run into a few hundred million by now.
   So I don't want the Mac OS X users who read this to emulate your Windows cousins and become clueless about viruses. I want you to start caring.
   That means you should stop listening to anyone who tells you OS X Macs don't need anti-virus software. Yes, I realize that what I'm telling you now means you shouldn't take my previous advice, given for the last few years. I was wrong.
   You do need antivirus software. Apple's OS X computers don't invite attacks the way Windows PCs do, but they're not invulnerable. We know that now.
   So do the right thing. I tested both Intego VirusBarrier X4, $70, from www.intego.com and Sophos Anti-Virus 4.7 for Mac OS X, perhaps $1,000 a year for a small office, from www.sophos.com. I ranked each one just as good as the other in blocking viruses -- they each kept the two known OS X viruses out of my system and blocked a lot of Windows viruses, too -- but I liked the Intego software better for the way it reported activities and the way it worked in general.
   At no time did Intego VirusBarrier slow down my system despite its constant monitoring of all file activity. Sophos performed just as well. Both stayed out of the way and I didn't feel I was giving up any performance by running either one all the time.
   (But I'll admit I was a knucklehead for the first week that I installed the two programs. Yes, just as you're thinking, I had them both running in the background at the same time. My formerly speedy dual-processor G4 computer turned into Macmolasses. When I kept them from doing simultaneous checking, all was well.)
   If you're a typical OS X user, Intego is a good choice. It's not cheap as consumer software should be but it's very good. Sophos sells to businesses (or "enterprises") only. No doubt you could call yourself a business and have Sophos send a copy to your home (try "John Doe Enterprises," maybe), but I doubt that you'd want to do it; the licensing costs put it far out of sight.
   I also tried a free antivirus program for Unix and Linux that's been ported to OS X. It's ClamXav from www.clamxav.com. It's getting better month by month and someday might be worth trusting, but I don't think it's reached that point yet. It's certainly worth trying, but I'm not yet convinced that its virus database is as reliable as the databases from the other vendors.