Somewhere in the middle were Intego Mac Security X9 10.9, at 99.4 percent efficacy, and F-Secure Safe 17.0, at 93.8 percent. Even by AV-Test’s relatively lenient standards (it will recommend anything with a 10 out of a possible 18 points in its Windows AV evaluations), the company called this performance “unacceptable.” On the other hand, Comodo Antivirus 2.2 caught only 38.1 percent of Mac malicious software. If you have one of these programs, you can rest easy. They caught all 514 pieces of Mac malware that AV-Test threw at them. Avast Security 12.9, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac 6.1, Kaspersky Lab Internet Security for Mac 18.0, Sophos Home 1.2, Symantec Norton Security 7.5 and Trend Micro Antivirus 8.0 all earned perfect scores in system protection. If you buy a Mac and don’t use some kind of antivirus product on it, don’t be surprised if you find yourself facing down a very complicated - and costly - repair.įirst, the good news. The old canard that Macs don’t need antivirus software has by now been (we hope) thoroughly debunked, but if not: AV-Test measured more than 12 million attacks on Macs and 38,000 new Mac malware samples in 2017, peaking in December. AV-Test is a Madgeburg, Germany-based lab that periodically evaluates antivirus software for Windows, macOS and Android.
