I’ve just been asked for AV recommendations for a friend’s new Macbook and I’ll be honest, I know jeff all about Macs.

Is conventional wisdom still “don’t bother” or are there any actual realistic threats in the fruit-based world these days? And if so, what would people suggest?

Thanks in advance, card’s behind the bar.

Been using Macs for years and other than having the built-in firewall on i’ve never bothered with AV.

Snap.
If they do want it then F-Secure is about the best. Very unobtrusive and very little resources needed for it to sit in the background unlike just about anything else

I’ve got sophos installed on mine. Its free and doesn’t seem to be a resource hog.

I’ve never bothered. Just make sure updates are turned on.

Anti-Virus? On a Mac? Does your friend work for MI5 or something?

Like those above I have never bothered with AV software on my Macs. It was one of the many many reasons I bought a Mac in the first place.

Our IT ‘bod’ (we are too small for a department) is happy for the Mac users not to use AV, but we get regular Phishing email updates from him as it seems the Mac users are a bit more willing to believe any email they receive.

In fairness they are the ones talking to the majority of external people as Macs are for ‘customer facing’ people in our organisation, so its is slightly understandable.

I use the free Avast version – used Malware Bytes before. Not sure either is 100% necessary, but they are fairly unobtrusive and do also block potentially damaging web pages.
I use NordVPN too.

Avast in use on our work Macs. There’s a small performance hit on our older machines and they’re unusable during the weekly full scan. The Intego stuff works well if you have a sparkly new machine.

They aren’t magically invulnerable. Our work still makes us use AV (Symantec FWIW). It’s only a matter of time I’d say.

Nothing is secure, especially when there are so many ways to compromise a system as you know.

AV on windows and mac is a throw back that some people just can’t seem to let go of. built in stuff is fine on either.

Better to invest time and set up a regular clone of your disk.

ClamXAV. There are viruses out there for OS X, as well as browser vulnerabilities. I wouldn’t be complacent.

AV on windows and mac is a throw back that some people just can’t seem to let go of. built in stuff is fine on either.

You mean third party AV is a throwback…

molgrips

You mean third party AV is a throwback…

yes thought that was obvious! 😆

built in stuff is fine on either.