How to Protect Your Mac from a Virus

Once upon a time the thought of getting a virus on your Mac OS X computer would have been laughable. In some ways, it still is. You can almost count on one hand the computer virus' that are actually "in the wild" and could pose a potential for wreaking havoc on your Macintosh. Antivirus software maker Intego recently reported that an enterprising black hat hacker has been trying to auction a virus on a computer bulletin board hacking site to the highest bidder. The virus, in theory, has the potential to seriously damage your Mac. The threat can masquerade as a simple download or an application and if released into the wild on a peer to peer file sharing site, could wreak havoc on your Mac. Without going into a lot of technical detail, the alleged virus could take control of your computer and in turn, inflict quite a bit of damage.

Should you worry about this new threat? Yes and no. The amount of virus and malware infections for the Macintosh is minuscule compared to the threats already lurking on the Internet that can trash a Windows operating system. Still, when it comes to virus protection, your mantra should always be, "it's better to be safe than sorry." Depending on your budget and concern, there are quite a few antivirus software packages available to keep your Mac safe. Here's a rundown of a number of antivirus software packages available for Mac OS X:

ClamXav

If you're on a budget, this is the antivirus software package for you. ClamXav is a free/open source antivirus package that already has a well respected history protecting nearly every Linux webserver on the Internet. ClamXav runs in the background on your Mac system and can be setup to monitor downloads and specific folders and files that could be vounerable to an infection. The application will not only watch out for possible Mac infections, it can also scan a Windows partition or a virtual machine running Windows on your Mac. Most users will find that ClamXav will be all the antivirus protection they will ever need. And best of all, it's free!

Intego

Intego makes the popular Virus Barrier and Net Barrier for the Macintosh and also offers solutions for those of us running dual purpose OS X and Windows operating systems and it will check for not only Mac OS specific virus infections, it also scans for Windows virus infections too. Intego has been on the forefront of the Mac OS X virus detection world lately, being one of the first companies not only announcing the new Mac virus potentialities, Intego has been diligent updating their antivirus software to detect and disinfect Mac virus threats.

Sophos

Sophos is somewhat of a newcomer on the Mac antivirus front. Its Sophos Endpoint Security and Control is a cross platform product that provides a virus detection engine that scans and detects non-Mac viruses.