Sophos for Mac

The increasing popularity of Mac computers has caught the eyes of a growing number of hackers who would love to take a bigger bite out of the Apple user community. Aiming for the home-user market, Sophos – a respected name in antivirus software – has responded to what the company described as a "lack of high performance consumer Mac AV products on the market." The result, Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac (version 7.2) for standalone Macs running Mac OS X version 10.4 or later,or Sophos Mac, is impressive.

For Apple users, the news of antivirus security software designed just for the Mac OS may elicit skepticism. "Macs don't get viruses, do they?"

While it's true that the Mac operating system has been a less-tempting, more-difficult target to attack, cybercriminals love crowds, and the company's wildly successful marketing campaign and innovative product line is one incredibly tempting, well, apple, hanging on the tree. Wall Street watchers expect Apple computer's global sales to increase 22 percent over last year's numbers.

Hackers motivated by fame, glory or a desire to get back at the world – who truly know the full range of motivations behind cybercrime – now have Apple computers solidly in their crosshairs, making antivirus software for Mac a necessity. Plus, there's always the good-cybercitizen motivation for downloading Sophos Mac. Why be a virus-hosting Typhoid Mary, spreading PC viruses that are harmless to you, as a Macintosh owner, along to your PC-using friends via email?

That said, what does Sophos Mac offer Apple users? For a start, it's free for home Macintosh users. You will find an impressive array of features, including a seek-and-find virus hunter and system cleaning tools. This antivirus software designed for Mac OS X searches and quarantines viruses, Trojans and worms.

Sophos has a Mac-friendly interface, and you can install it using the Apple installer, which you can also use to uninstall the software. The installation requires 190MB of disk space. Once installed, the Sophos Mac Black Shield icon is displayed in the menu bar. The software runs in the background. It does put a sizable demand on the central processing unit – at least during the initial scan – and that first scan can take up to several hours, depending upon the number of files on your computer. However, reports from other testers indicated that subsequent scans did not put heavy demands on the CPU.

Options for Sophos Mac include scanning drives and options to scan individual files manually. It's wise to do a Time Machine backup prior to installation. Scans are customizable, too. When the software locates a virus, all you need to do is open Sophos' Quarantine Manager, where you will see a list of all the threats the scans have found. You will also find instructions and choices for how to remove them. If the Black Shield icon stays black, your computer is protected. You can also choose to remove the icon from your menu bar.

As with other Mac software, Sophos has user-friendly options, a polite manner and happy-in-the-background demeanor, and does not confront you with annoying pop-up ads and other adware.

The verdict: Sophos Mac has created an easy-to-use, effective tool in the arsenal against malicious attackers. Even though Apple computers have long had the advantage, that situation is bound to change and evolve as its computers become more popular. The hardest task for Sophos will be convincing Apple users to use the software.

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