What Is Sophos Anti-virus For Mac
Issue ID Description MACEP-1890 Fixed the Japanese date formatting for email alerts. MACEP-1897 Fixed an issue with displaying the last logged in user in Sophos Enterprise Console.
MACEP-1927 Lenovo ThinkPad USB Secure Hard Drive 1TB is treated as a Secure Removable Device. MACEP-2054 Improved streaming for AAC audio formats. MACEP-2040 Cross-grades from on-premise to Sophos Central endpoints works as expected. MACEP-2048 Improved performance when opening Adobe Illustrator files from network locations. MACEP-2125 Improved performance and compatibility for Time Machine.
MACEP-2201 Stability improvements for the on-access scanner. MACEP-2106 Improved performance of the on-access scanner with sparse bundle disk images. MACEP-2110 The domain name for 'mobile managed' Active Directory accounts is now reported correctly to the console.
MACEP-2194 Apricorn Inc. ASK-256-4GB and Lenovo ThinkPad USB 3.0 Secure Drive are now recognized as secure removable devices. MACEP-2095 Changes to Update Interval in the AutoUpdate preferences are saved even when you have not pressed the Enter key. Issue ID Description MACEP-1993 Improved compatibility with Gatekeeper in macOS Sierra 10.12. MACEP-2002 Resolved a software crash when identifying drives without UUID info.
MACEP-1974 Resolved an issue with AutoUpdate when using proxy PAC scripts. MACEP-1970 Resolved an issue with the installer. It should not hang when telemetry cannot be sent.
MACEP-1966 Resolved an issue with false reports of the software not running after updates. MACEP-1945 Resolved an issue with Time Machine backups being slowed down by the on-access scanner.
Issue ID Description MACEP-1290 We have ensured that the 'Deny access and move' option behaves consistently when it is applied to infected files that Sophos Anti-Virus could clean up. MACEP-1349 Web Protection was preventing file deletion on the website cookpad.com. This now works as expected. MACEP-1492 Under some circumstances threats detected in Time Machine backup volumes were displayed without details of their location. This has now been resolved. MACEP-768 The installer now defaults to English when the computer's language preference is not one of the supported languages (it previously defaulted to German instead). MACEP-952 Web Protection now correctly parses and processes Server-Sent Events (Content-Type of 'text/event-stream').
Server-Sent Events (SSE) is a standard that allows servers to send updates or data streams to browsers automatically. MACEP-1883 Resolved a compatibility issue with macOS Sierra 10.12 Beta 2. MACEP-1863 Improved the installation so that the creation of the sophos user and group is more robust. MACEP-1849 Resolved a web compatibility issue when viewing PDFs from shopkick.com. Issue ID Description MACEP-1049 Issues with Device Control on OS X El Capitan (10.11) On OS X El Capitan (10.11), read-only policies for Device Control do not work for removable storage, or for removable secure storage. MACEP-1054 Issues when Web Protection is used in conjunction with Apple Parental Controls on OS X El Capitan (10.11) On OS X El Capitan (10.11), when Web Protection is active, sites that are correctly blocked by Apple Parental Controls display a blank page, rather than the expected Parental Control block page.
The SAV OS X installer will download a full version of SAV OS X when it performs its first auto-update. DEF89762 The Scan now with Sophos Anti-Virus item in the Finder contextual menu may sometimes not be displayed correctly. Issues with copying infected files to a quarantine folder.
If the immediate scanner moves or copies an infected file to a quarantine folder, the action is intercepted by the on-access scanner. This is because Spotlight indexes the quarantine folder when a file is quarantined there. To work around this, in the Spotlight preferences, put the quarantine folder into the list of excluded folders. Certain configuration changes do not trigger alerts in SEC. If you make any of the following configuration changes in the Sophos Anti-Virus updating preferences pages, they do not trigger a differs from policy alert in Sophos Enterprise Console:. Disable updating from a secondary location.
Set the primary or secondary proxy to either Use System Proxy Settings or Do Not Use Proxy. Web Control with Sophos Enterprise Console is not supported. Authentication caching in OS X may prevent you from unlocking the preferences panel immediately after an upgrade. To unlock the preferences panel, log out, then log in to your Mac again. After you install Sophos Anti-Virus, the Scan with Sophos Anti-Virus command is not immediately contained in a Finder shortcut menu. It appears when you log in to your Mac again. After you uninstall Sophos Anti-Virus, the Scan with Sophos Anti-Virus command is still present in a Finder shortcut menu.
It disappears when you log in to your Mac again. In Sophos Enterprise Console and Sophos Control Center, you can set up email alerting for Virus alerts, Scanning errors or Other errors. Mac OS X computers do not support the Scanning errors option and therefore do not send these alerts. Copyright © 2018 Sophos Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise unless you are either a valid licensee where the documentation can be reproduced in accordance with the licence terms or you otherwise have the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.
Sophos, Sophos Anti-Virus and SafeGuard are registered trademarks of Sophos Limited, Sophos Group and Utimaco Safeware AG, as applicable. All other product and company names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
. Pros Certified by one independent lab. Taanker the valleys season 3 episode 7 : free dvd converter for mac. Detected all Windows malware in hands-on test.
Very good phishing protection. Remote management. Simple parental control.
Cons Content filter foiled by secure anonymizing proxy. Bottom Line Sophos Home Free (for Mac) keeps configuration to a minimum and gets good scores both in independent lab tests and our own hands-on tests.
It's a fine choice for protecting your Macs without spending your hard-earned cash. For many years, Mac owners scoffed at the idea of installing protection. Those are Windows problems, right?
While it's true that Windows is a much more popular target for malware coders, macOS devices aren't as invulnerable as some might think. If you don't want to spend money on antivirus protection for your Mac, consider installing the free Sophos Home Free (for Mac). It's extraordinarily simple, and it does well in testing. Mac users often justify skipping antivirus protection on the basis that there just isn't a lot of Mac malware. Why spend money on something you might not need?
But Mac malware is on the rise, and you can install Sophos at no charge, as long as you're not using it in a commercial setting. Is also free, with no restrictions, and no requirement to even register. Commercial Mac antivirus pricing is generally just under $40 per year for a single license. Half of the current products fit that model, and most of those give you three licenses for $59.99 per year. With, that $59.99 subscription price gets you not three licenses but unlimited licenses. You can install it on all the macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS devices in your household.
My experience has been that Mac users are more likely to keep their operating systems fully updated than their Windows-loving counterparts. Even so, not everyone has the very latest macOS Sierra installed. Like, Sophos supports older versions back to Yosemite (10.10).
That's a change since the previous edition, which went all the way back to Mountain Lion (10.8). Avira, also free, requires at least El Capitan (10.11), the toughest OS requirement of my current collection of Mac antivirus products. Online Dashboard and Content Filter As noted, clicking Manage Devices or Preferences from the Sophos widget's menu takes you to the online dashboard. You can also just log in directly from any browser. The main page lists your protected devices. If you haven't used up all three licenses, you can click Add Device to either install on the device you're using or send a link by email. If you've replaced one of your computers, you can remove it from the dashboard, freeing up that license for reuse.
The dashboards for Windows and macOS devices are nearly identical. The Status page displays panels for Antivirus Protection and Web Protection (enabled) plus Ransomware Protection, Privacy Protection, and Malicious Traffic Detection (for paying customers only).
Clicking the Configure link in the two available panels opens the Protection page, with the proper sub-page selected. Configuration is simple. On the General sub-page you can turn PUA (Potentially Unwanted Application) detection or all real-time protection on and off. On the Web sub-page you can turn off blacklisting of known malware-hosting sites. Here's one of the few many PCs get more than Macs.
On a PC, you get Download Reputation checking, a feature that proved useful in my testing under Windows. Safe Online Banking is also Windows-only, but that's a premium feature. Here's something I didn't expect—there's a simple parental control component built into the dashboard.
What Is Sophos Anti-virus For Mac Mac
For each device, you can configure how Sophos will handle almost 30 categories of website content. By default, they're all set to allow access, but you can set it to block matching sites, or to give the child a warning before allowing access. I tried to access several dozen inappropriate sites, and found that the content filter blocked all of them. However, it appears that the content filter can't handle secure (HTTPS) websites.
By logging in to a secure anonymizing proxy site, I completely evaded the content filter. The same was true of the similar feature in. Kaspersky offers a full parental control component, with content filtering, internet time scheduling, and more, but it, too, fell victim to a secure anonymizing proxy. The fact that Sophos focuses mainly on businesses makes this dashboard-based configuration system totally logical.
In a business, the IT security admin handles antivirus configuration, not the security-ignorant employees. It can also be great for tech-savvy consumers. Instead of having to drive across town to help Uncle Albert with his antivirus, you can handle it all remotely. Good Malware Protection Test Scores. If you're looking for a new car, you read about all sorts of safety tests which ones rated best.
In the security realm, the independent testing labs are the place to go for such information. Much more test data is available for utilities, but two of the labs do release test results for Mac on a regular basis. It's a good thing, from my point of view, because few of my own testing techniques carry over to macOS. Previously, Sophos received Mac malware certification from, with 100 percent detection in the main Mac malware test.
However, in the most recent test report from this lab, Sophos didn't appear. Scores overall were down slightly, with only Bitdefender and Kaspersky managing 100 percent detection of Mac malware. The researchers at perform several different tests to rate Mac antivirus.
The most important, of course, is a test of Mac malware protection. Like and several others, Sophos scored 100 percent on this test. PUAs aren't necessarily malware, but as the name implies, you probably don't want them around. When challenged with a collection of PUAs, Sophos protected against more than 95 percent. Only Avast, Bitdefender, ESET, and Trend Micro scored higher.
As for detecting Windows malware, AV-Test gave Sophos (and several other products) the top score. Scanning and Scheduling.
As noted, Sophos advises just using the fast malware scan unless the real-time protection system detects malware. Even so, I suggest running one full scan right after installation, to make sure there's nothing lurking.
Running that scan with Sophos on my test Mac took 20 minutes, about half the current average and much better than the previous edition. Trend Micro's full scan ran for more than three hours. At the other end of the spectrum, running a full scan with took just two minutes. Not only that, the full scan by Sophos detected some malware lurking in the trash and in cache folders. There's clearly value in that initial full scan. Like and Kaspersky, Sophos doesn't run scans on a schedule.
The logic here is that that real-time protection should take care of any nasties that crop up after the initial full scan. Most of the Mac antivirus products I've reviewed also check for Windows malware, to make sure that your Mac doesn't act as a conduit to other devices on the network. I copied my current collection of Windows malware to a USB drive and opened the folder of samples. Sophos started cleaning up right away, stacking up ranks of slide-in notifications. It removed high-risk items immediately, but left lower-risk PUAs for my review. In each case, I clicked a button to clean up the PUA. I would have liked an option to clean them all at once rather than having to go through the process one at a time.
The tiny pull-down window got a lot bigger at this point, filled with reports of malware removed and PUA cleanups in progress. For a few items, Sophos recommended manual cleanup, with a button to get instructions.
The instructions thoroughly covered situations including malware found in backups, in caches, and in email attachments. In my case, all I needed to do was delete the offending files. Sophos doesn't bother with storing detected malware in quarantine. It strips virus code from infected files and simply deletes other types of malware. You can Control-Click any drive or folder and choose Scan with Sophos Home. Note, though, that at the moment this feature is not working with mounted drives such as USB thumb drives.
A fix is expected by the first of March. Excellent Phishing Protection Creating a drive-by download or other web-based malware attack isn't easy, and the payload is almost always platform-specific. Creating a phishing website, on the other hand, is a total breeze. Just build a page that looks exactly like, say, the PayPal login page, and broadcast links to that page in a spam campaign.
Each unwitting dupe who logs in to your fake page is another PayPal account you own. And phishing works on any platform, in any browser. Unlike many of the Mac antivirus products I've looked at, Sophos doesn't need to install a browser add-in for protection against malicious and fraudulent URLs. Filtering happens below the browser level, which is certainly convenient. I always use the very newest real-world fraudulent sites in my antiphishing test, gathering several hundred from websites that track such things. A tiny utility that I wrote makes it easy to launch each URL in four browsers at once. Three of those rely on the protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, while Norton protects the fourth.
As for Mac testing, my utility is no help, so I simply copy each URL to the clipboard and paste it into the browser. The fraudsters who create phishing pages are always coming up with new dirty tricks, so rather than report detection rates as hard numbers, I report the difference between the product under testing and the other four.
Very few products, whether running on Windows or macOS, can beat Norton. When last tested, Sophos came in just three percentage points behind Norton. This time it was seven points behind, but retained its position in the chart. All three browsers had an unusually good day. Sophos beat Internet Explorer by 10 percentage points, but only tied Chrome and Firefox. Avira, by contrast, fared worse in this test than the three browsers, and much worse than Norton, a full 47 percentage points behind. Did better than Sophos in this test, lagging Norton by a single percentage point, and Bitdefender actually beat Norton by five points.
The Norton product I use as my touchstone is the long-standing Windows edition; fell behind in this test. Tested with the exact same sample set, it scored 14 percentage points below its Windows cousin's detection rate. Free and Easy Sophos Home (for Mac) has pared down antivirus protection to the essential minimum. It does the job, with next to no configuration settings. One of the two independent labs that I follow certifies its protection; the other certified it in a previous test.
It did well in my antiphishing test, and detected every single Windows malware sample I threw at it. You can even use it for a simple kind of parental control. Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac took certification from both labs, however, with top scores across the board. Bitdefender also beat the pack in my antiphishing test.
It marks up dangerous links in search results, and defends your documents against ransomware. Kaspersky is a full suite, with network protection, privacy protection, parental control, and more. These two are our Editors' Choice products for, but if you can't afford them, Sophos Home Free is a reasonable choice.