Anti-Virus Solutions for Mac

[saweron]

Hi all,

I was wondering what you as Mac OS X Admins would recommend as anti-virus solution; our company’s statute demands that our IT is regularly audited and lack of anti-virus measures would just make the auditors choke.

Requirements would be:

– targeted for a SME (10 Macs or so)
– central management would be a bonus

We identified some candidates but since we have no experience in this whatsoever, we’d like some other opinions

avast! antivirus Mac Edition
McAfee (formerly Virex)
Intego VirusBarrier X6
TrendMicro Worry-Free Business Security 7 – Advanced

Looking forward to your 2c

[bschappel]

I highly recommend Sohos AV. I’ve used it for many years. It has proven to be very reliable and has caused no issues with my desktops. It has central update capability. If you are an Active Directory shop you can manage Windows boxes and Macs from the same centralized console. If you’re Mac only or don’t use AD then their Mac management console can handle the Macs separately from the Windows clients.

[cashxx]

I would say Sophos AV as well. I had a demo and its about the only one with a Mac Management console and stuff. The only thing is the license, they are expensive!

Symantec used to have a nice looking Mac Version with a nice looking Management Console, but it scared me a little. Script would kick off this script and then that script would kickoff another and it was a bundle of mess. Not sure if they have anything today or not.

I wanted a solution for the Macs only though, I wanted a server management console and client proteactoin and not many are out there that I could find. Sophos was about the only one.

[MrTips]

tell me about this mac management console that you say sophos offers. I can’t locate any information on it, and even a sophos rep I spoke with said that the management console is windows only. are you talking about something different from their sophos enterprise console?

[deemery]

Well, the key problem for any anti-virus on a Mac (or anywhere else) is to show it is both Safe and Effective (same standard FDA uses for drugs, vaccines, etc 🙂 The absence of established real threats makes it hard to establish “effective”, and previous experience with badly-behaving AntiVirus software makes me wonder about “safe”.

Of course, you can’t talk reasonable risk assessment (or much else) with corporate IT Nazis…

dave

[cashxx]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: MrTips[/u][p]tell me about this mac management console that you say sophos offers. I can’t locate any information on it, and even a sophos rep I spoke with said that the management console is windows only. are you talking about something different from their sophos enterprise console?[/p][/QUOTE]

Looking on there website it looks like they did away with the mac console they had. It was very basic, but worked. That was a few years ago now though.

**UPDATE**

Well going back and found another page on there site I think I am thinking of the Mac “Sophos Update Manager”. You can basically setup a share on your server and point the clients to the share and set the settings for your clients and set the updates and stuff like that. Not sure if its the same thing or not, if it is it did the basic job of what I wanted. They have a demo….get the demo and try it out and look at the white papers. Best I could find for an all mac solution, but haven’t really looked around since then. We backed off because of the pricing was outrageous.

http://www.sophos.com/products/enterprise/endpoint/security-and-control/mac/

**UPDATE 2**
Just found this pdf mentioning about Sophos Update Manager on page 32.

Management control from either Mac or Windows platform
Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac can be managed either by using Sophos Update Manager for Mac or Sophos Enterprise Console (Windows). You do not need to run both of these administrator interfaces to ensure that Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X is kept up to date.

Centralized management
Enterprise Console enables you to configure and manage anti-malware protection for Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX computers, network-wide from a central point. Enterprise Console does require a Windows computer to be available and offers enhanced management functionality. If you are on a Mac only network, then Sophos Update Manager for Mac allows updating and configuration from a single Mac computer. It enables you to set automatic updating and choose how you receive email notifications. You can also determine how scanning will be implemented on Mac desktops and laptops, and enables full centralized configuration of the desktop settings

http://www.sophos.com/sophos/docs/eng/factshts/sophos-endpoint-security-and-data-protection-rgna.pdf

[MrTips]

Thanks, I’ll talk to another rep and see if that older mac update manager is still available with the current version. Maybe the pricing has changed, as well.

[badmojo]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: MrTips[/u][p]Thanks, I’ll talk to another rep and see if that older mac update manager is still available with the current version. Maybe the pricing has changed, as well.[/p][/QUOTE]

I use Sophos in Mac only environments with the mac server as an update server only. There is not a current Mac based management tool but if you have one pc or a VM of a PC, you can use that for better management.

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