Top Mac AV programs have a 100% hit rate

Ten Mac antivirus programs have been given an Approved Security Product Award from AV-comparatives following a thorough testing process.

Each of the 10 products tested was able to detect all 50 of the most recent and prevalent Mac malware samples, including the KeRanger ransomware discovered in March that is believed to have affected over 7000 users.

The 10 products were Avast Free Mac Security, AVG AntiVirus for Mac, AVIRA Free Antivirus for Mac, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac, ESET Cyber Security Pro, Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9, Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac, McAfee Live Safe for Mac, Sophos Home for Mac and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete for Mac.

These applications were put through a testing process involving installing the programs on a freshly imaged machine, introducing a USB flash drive with the malware samples, running an on-demand scan of the drive and running any malware samples that have not been detected or deactivated.

All products had a detection rate of 100%, and none of the programs produced any false alarms.

Most of the products also claim to detect Windows malware as well to prevent Mac systems from serving as unwitting conduits for Windows-based attacks, so the programs were also exposed to 250 prevalent and current Windows malware samples using mostly the same process.

Here the results were slightly more varied, but with the exception of Intego’s suite, which had a 28% detection rate, all 10 products were able to detect at least 92% of the samples. Five of the products — from Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET and Kaspersky — had a 100% detection rate as well.

AV-Comparatives also praised the 10 antivirus products as being intuitive and easy to use. The report also notes that while recent attacks such as KeRanger show that Macs are not immune to malware, the number of malicious programs that can currently attack Mac OS X Yosemite is limited.

For this reason, it is to be expected that Mac security products are able to protect against all threats not yet blocked by the operating system itself.

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