There is a rumour that macs don’t need antivirus due to their advanced built in security however this simply isn’t true. There have been a number of reported major security flaws in their system which has led to a huge amount of data being stolen. To be fair, the market share for mac users is only around 7% compared to windows which is just below 90%, therefore virus developers will naturally attack Windows as the chances of success is a lot more likely making them more revenue.
To guarantee safety we suggest getting protected as soon as possible, even if that’s via a free antivirus for the time-being. This will give you enough protection to cover yourself from a lot of viruses out there but to further protect yourself we suggest upgrading to a full package.
Free antiviruses often offer very good basic protection and in terms of scanning and removing threats they can be just as good as the paid version. The problem is that they don’t offer extra tools that help protect you further. Viruses these days have been developed to be spread via multiple channels like spam in email clients, hacking on public networks and malicious software via browser extensions. These are quickly becoming the most popular way of spreading the viruses and so full protection is very much recommended. Full packages are likely to include anti-spam, an advanced firewall and browser protection.
It all depends on what you use your mac for. If you rarely or never connect to the internet and do such tasks like writing word documents, editing photos and listening to offline music then you shouldn’t require an antivirus or at best (if you want to be safer than sorry) then a free version will suffice. If you’re online often, visiting social media sites and doing online banking then we highly recommend upgrading to a paid version with the extra features mentioned above.
To conclude, we highly recommend getting protected if you have no protection at the minute. The concept of being safe just because you use a mac couldn’t be further from the truth. The market share is growing and so virus developers will definitely be concentrating a lot more on attacking macs in the near future.