Sophos Giving Away Free Antivirus Protection For Mac Users

I know the Apple Fanboys out there believe that their Mac's are impervious to many of the threats that face us PC guys. But lets face it folks every day we see more and more viruses written for the Mac platform and a growing number of cross platform attacks that are infecting Mac users just like your average PC user.

Over the past couple of years Apple themselves has even stepped to the plate and suggested that user might need AV protection. A page that has since been removed entitled "Mac OS: Antivirus utilities" suggested that user should look for a good antivirus utility.

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

Apple then suggested three products Intego VirusBarrier, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee VirusScan for Mac all three of which will set their users back as much as $80. Stepping up to the plate is Sophos a well know vendor of security software and hardware, including anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, network access control, encryption software and data loss prevention for desktops.

The company is now offering Mac users a great deal. As Apple has thus far refused to protect its users with free antivirus software, Sophos is launching Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition for Macs which will protect Mac users against "today’s and tomorrow’s Mac threats".

"While most businesses recognize the importance of protecting their Mac computers from malware threats, most home users do not," said Chris Kraft, product management vice president at Sophos.

"Mac users must remember that less targeted is not the same as invulnerable", Sophos security expert Richard Wang.

The threat is not as prevalent as PC users, with only "one to two" attacks on Macs each week, compared to the "tens of thousands" per day against Windows PCs, said Wang.

According to Wang, attacks against Mac users are mostly delivered via malicious Web sites. Boonana, a Koobface variant, recently made the rounds of Facebook and other social networking sites targeting Mac users. The Boonana-infected site first determined the visitor’s operating system and then delivered malware appropriate for that platform, said Wang.

Read more: Yes, you need anti-virus on your Mac.. and now it's free