In addition, often security tools will not only include anti-malware scanners, but also have firewalls, secure keyboard entry, and other routines that may sometimes be desired. However, this mentality butts heads with those who may not trust, or have, the abilities to avoid all potential avenues of attack on their systems. Hard-core Mac users often claim malware scanners offer more potential harm than good, especially given the relative lack of malware for OS X. Whether or not antivirus tools are recommended for OS X is a question that is still in a bit of flux. Therefore, if you are looking for an anti-malware package to use, you might consider weighing those which perform well in tests like this, against the additional features they offer and recommendations by those who have used them. Worthy of note here is that often acclaimed anti-malware tools such as the open source ClamXav, McAfee, and Symantec's iAntivirus, did not make it into this top tier set. In his testing, Reed found that the top malware scanners for OS X include the following (in no particular order) which were able to detect over 95 percent of tested threats:
#Apple virus scanner for mac software#
This effort follows similar assessments done by Reed in past years, but has been repeated to characterize the fluctuating nature of not only new malware threats, but also the effectiveness of scanning engines as they receive software updates and new malware definitions from their developers.
Recently Mac security researcher and analyst Thomas Reed put to the test a number of popular antivirus tools for OS X, to see which perform the best for detecting known malware threats for OS X.