Re: Malware (antivirus) software for Macintosh

[John Ladwig <John.Ladwig () SO MNSCU EDU>]

Symantec Endpoint Protection 12 here, on a few Macs.

SEP 11 used to eat most of the CPU and drive the fans to takeoff thrust once a week or shortly after a  restart.  12 is 
some better, but I still periodically end up with two navx processes running, and that drags things to a crawl.  It's 
no third to kill the logged-in-user copy off, though.

Never seen it fire on anything, false or not, but our Macs have historically only been driven by the security team, who 
should generally be expected to be more careful than average.

Just started with the free Sophos package on the home Macs.  Other than the initial "all local disks" scan running for 
a *very* long time, it's been unobtrusive.  That one found some circa-2k4 PC viruses in an old email attachments folder 
and dutifully quarantined them.  Haven't noticed CPU consumption issues with Sophos so far.

   -jml

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Dean 
Williams
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 2:18 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Malware (antivirus) software for Macintosh

A rash of Flashback infections has us thinking about malware protection for our Macintoshes.  Is anyone using a product 
that you'd recommend (or recommend against!)?   If you are supporting malware protection for your Macintoshes, is the 
impact on system performance acceptable?   Is it effective in preventing or at least detecting infections?  Are updates 
timely?  Is it affordable?

Thanks for any experience or insight you can share.

Dean Williams, GSLC
Information Security Officer
Enterprise Technology Services
University of Vermont
Dean.Williams () uvm edu<mailto:Dean.Williams () uvm edu> | 802-656-1174
http://www.uvm.edu/it/