My daughter will, we think, be heading off to her freshman year of college shortly. I purchased a MacBook for her and want to make sure the machine is reasonably protected from malware and other threats. Which antivirus/anti-malware vendors are reputable these days? Who can be trusted with the contents of a computer? Which work reasonably well on a Mac to offer a college student some malware protection without getting in the way?
I’ve used Windows Defender in the Windows world for years. I simply have no context on antivirus software these days, but understand there have been some issues with some vendors sending information to the cloud and some question as to whether some vendors have ties to adversarial governments. Given how much access these tools have, I’m really uncomfortable. I feel like Apple should do what Microsoft has done and build their own anti-malware software.
I thought Microsoft had announced they were bringing Defender to the Mac, but when I checked, it doesn’t yet appear to be available. I’m also wondering if this is meant to be an Enterprise offering. I would feel perfectly comfortable with using Defender on the Mac.
I’ve been a casual Mac user for quite a few years to play around with iOS development, but I’ve never run any type of antivirus/anti-malware software on mine.