THE BAD • Poor malware detection • considerable system impact. VERDICT While Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is free, it offers neither the best malware detection nor the least system impact. [ UPDATE: Sophos has informed us that as of December 2015, Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is no longer offered. It’s been replaced by a new free product, Sophos Home.
Review: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X. Posted: November 8th, 2010 Author: Israel Torres. Sophos declares the following in their campaign for Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition: Malware myth: Macs can’t get viruses. SophosLabs have detected over 1,000 threats for Mac OS. Sophos has announced the availability of a free Mac anti-virus product - Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac. Software security specialists Sophos has announced the availability of a free Mac.
![Free Free](https://cdn3.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/reviews/3263015/Sophos_Anti-Virus_for_Mac_Home_Edition_282_thumb336.jpg)
We’ll have a review of Sophos Home ready soon.] Apple’s OS X was until recently touted as a platform that was immune from malware. Over the past few years, though, a rising tide of Mac malware has changed minds and taken away the sense of security. Those looking for a simple and free solution may be tempted by the free Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition, which is the follow-up to our Best AV Software for Mac in 2014. Unfortunately, Sophos hasn’t done enough to stay atop the Mac antivirus mountain.
Antivirus Protection Last year, we selected Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition as our Editors’ Choice. We can’t repeat that choice this year, chiefly because the product slipped drastically in April 2015 protection evaluations conducted by German independent lab AV-TEST. In the new tests, Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition detected 92.5 percent of on-demand malware (found during active scans) and 88.4 percent of on-access malware (detected as files were opened, downloaded or executed). Last year, Sophos got 96.6 and 97.6 on the same tests, respectively. When it comes to antivirus products, what counts is not how much malware is stopped, but how much manages to get through.
We simply can’t recommend a product that detects less than 90 percent of malware. Four products — Avast Free Antivirus for Mac, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac — each detected 100 percent of malware in on-demand detection. Avira Free Antivirus for Mac was the only one to detect 100 percent of on-access Mac malware; it is this year’s Editor’s Choice. Sophos’ malware-detection abilities would have been the worst overall in our 2015 roundup had it not been for the even lower scores of Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus, which, unlike Sophos, is a paid product. Hp 1000 driver for windows 7 64-bit. [Sophos contacted us to point out that Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac caught 100 percent of on-demand malware in AV-TEST’s fall 2015 round of evaluations.
On-access scans were not tested.] Security Features and Tools Bare-bones and not trying to hide it, Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is limited to searching for malicious files and managing them. There aren’t any extras. Scan This Mac, the primary function of Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition, is a full-system scan. Started by clicking Scan Now, and visualized by a blue progress bar, Scan This Mac does its best to ensure that your computer is clean, even though it may be unable to inspect certain encrypted files. Granular settings for the full-system scan are found only by clicking on the Custom Scans triangle to expand the window.
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By next clicking on the Gear button and then Scan Settings, you can schedule scans, specify directories you don’t want the full scan to include and decide how to handle the files that Sophos believes are threats to your system. Dangerous files can be logged, cleaned, moved to quarantine or just plain deleted. However, there is no quick-scan option. The Custom search allows you to create searches for singular or multiple directories that you believe need inspection, with all of the same granular options as listed above in the full-system scan. Sophos also performs on-access scans, which analyze files without the program being commanded to do so. If the Sophos menu bar icon is in Sonar-scan mode and you haven’t asked it to perform a scan, it is processing new files it has encountered because of additions to your system or files currently accessed. The Quarantine section is the only other feature.