

Mac antivirus software – Norton Security for Mac As a result, cyber security is more important than ever, and a good antivirus is the best place to start if you want to stay safe. Also in June, users were warned by security firms Fortinet and AlienVault that there are new variants of malware targeting Macs after being published on the Dark Web.Ī report from Malwarebytes in August 2017 shows that Mac malware has increased 230 percent since July 2016. WannaCry was big news earlier in 2017, while news broke of Petya – a second ransomware attack – in late June.

Threats such as ransomware are on the rise, and have recently hit huge organizations including the NHS. However, Macs are not entirely safe, and as they grow in popularity and cybercriminals become smarter and greedier, the risk is increasing. Is it any wonder that cybercriminals focus on the Windows world? Fewer targets, and these are harder to hack. The second reason is that, right now, there are far fewer Macs than there are Windows PCs. Macs are not unhackable, but they are more difficult to exploit than Windows PCs. It’s like having a series of fire doors: even if malware gains access to your Mac, it is unable to spread to the heart of the machine. As a Unix-based operating system macOS is sandboxed. On the technical side, macOS is a Unix-based operating system. Macs are generally more secure than their Windows brethren for two reasons. We’d argue that they are wrong – or a bit overconfident, at least. Plenty of Mac aficionados will tell you that Apple computers are inherently secure and don’t need protection. These alternatives include Avira and Avast, but we can’t confidently say how safe they’ll keep you or how much they’ll affect the performance of your machine. There are some antivirus solutions that we don’t have AV-Tests results for and therefore haven’t included in this article. So you need to balance cost against performance impact when selecting a product. You’ll see that even though the best free antivirus programs are good at protection, they tend to hurt your Mac’s speed much more than paid- for software. AV-Test also looks at the impact of these pieces of software on your system: in layman’s terms, how much the antivirus slows down your Mac, if at all.įor each of the security solutions we outline here, we have tested their ability to keep your Mac safe, and balanced that against the impact on your Mac’s performance. In order for an antivirus to work effectively it also needs to be unobtrusive. Coupon: LOVEMOM.īut security is only half the story. Up to 50% OFF EaseUS Video Tools (RecExperts, Video Editor, VideoKit, Video Downloader, Video Converter, Video Compressor and MakeMyAudio).Deal: 10% off for Parallels Desktop (full license & 1st year of subscriptions only).

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