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Review: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X

Posted: November 8th, 2010
Author: Israel Torres

Introduction

Sophos declares the following in their campaign for Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition:

Malware myth: Macs can’t get viruses.
SophosLabs have detected over 1,000 threats for Mac OS.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition runs in the background and scans files for threats whenever your Mac opens them. It comes with an uninstaller (Applications/Remove Sophos) in case you want to remove it after trying it on your system.

I’ll be going through this review step-by-step and cover all the features related to the Mac system, usability, configuration and overall experience. Feel free to follow my journey.

Note: It is very important to be sure to backup your system with Time Machine or alternative back up software prior to installation and after verifying you have the requirements necessary to install and run adequately.

Review Version

Version: 7.2.1C
Threat detection engine: 3.12.11
Threat data: 4.59
Release date: November 1, 2010
Protects against 2111062 threats

Installation

Prior to even downloading the downloadable installation check over the Tech Specs page to verify that your system is up to par with what the software supports. The requirements are pretty simple as it works with Intel/PPC processors from Tiger to Snow Leopard on all Apple Mac hardware (including the latest Macbook Air released last month).

After downloading the Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac DMG (filename: savosx_72_he.dmg size:~62 MB) it is highly recommended that you invoke Terminal, change to your Downloads folder and generate the message digest using the command md5 savosx_72_he.dmg and match the checksum on the Sophos Tech Specs site (at the time of this writing) it is 21c3c6f2d93d0843238b9575792e06ef if the checksums do not match it is possible that the DMG corrupted during download, has been tampered with, or someone dropped the ball on synching the download page to the file. A quick tweet to http://twitter.com/sophossupport could help fix that although no guarantees.

Once you’ve verified the checksum you may proceed with the installation. The DMG auto mounts (labled as “Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition OS X 10.4+”) on a default Mac system and opens a window with a two step process.

The first is to to check the link labeled “Before You Install.html” which redirects you to the Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition FreeTalk / MacTalk User Forum where you can read through issues other users may be having ahead of time as well as system-wide announcements that may affect the version you are using on your system. Sometimes if you notice a lot of users complaining about issues like their systems slowing down because of something you have in common there may be discovered work-arounds you can ready yourself for or in the end decide not to run the product installation. Please do this step as it can save you hours of headaches and time rebuilding your system if the installation or software won’t work for you no matter what you do. You never know how lucky you are until your number comes up 🙂

Once you’re satisfied by putting in some research time and sanity checks you can move to the second step of clicking on “Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition.mpkg” (Meta Package File). You will be walked through the Sophos End-User License Agreement for Consumers (EULA) and will have to agree to their licensing terms before proceeding. To keep your anti-virus protection up to date, the installer will connect (via the Internet) to Sophos and configure anti-virus updates. The Standard Install will take approximately 182 MB of hard disk space. At this time you have the option to change the installation location as well as further customize however the Custom Install identical to the Standard Install as you can’t check or uncheck additional options at this time.

Clicking continue will prompt for your administrator password. If you don’t have one or don’t recall setting one up for your Mac don’t worry just click OK to continue. (It’s unwise to have a blank password for your Mac but that’s another article…) During the installation Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac requires your Administrator password in order to install system components only accessible by the Administrator of the Mac system.

Once the installation is successfully complete you can close and drag the image to the trash or right click and eject the image.

At this time you can verify that the Black Shield is now on your menu bar by where the time is displayed.

The Black Shield

The Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition Black Shield icon has 9 clickable selections as follows in the respective top down order.

1) Update Now : This checks for the latest update files.
2) Cancel Update : This cancels the update in progress.
3) Show AutoUpdate Window : This displays the status of your updates.
4) Scan Local Drives : This invokes the application to scan local drives.
5) Open Sophos Anti-Virus… : This invokes the application.
6) Open Preferences… : This customizes the behavior of the software.
7)Open Quarantine Manager… : This opens the Quarantine Manager to review and act.
8) Hide Status in Menu Bar : This hides the Black Shield from the menu bar.
9) About Sophos Anti-Virus : This displays the version, engine, data, threat information.

Note: When Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac is running the Black Shield icon on the right side of the menu bar. To access the Quarantine Manager click the Black Shield and choose Open Quarantine Manager. To check for viruses manually click the Black Shield and select Scan Local Drives.

The Dock Icon

If you end up hiding the Black Shield and want to get it back you can use Finder to navigate to Applications and click on the Sophos Anti-Virus application (which is a blue shield) this will load a blue shield on your dock where you can right click to see similar items seen using the Black Shield as follows:

1) Update Now : This checks for the latest update files.
2) Cancel Update : This cancels the update in progress.
3) Show Status in Menu Bar : This brings the Black Shield back to your menu bar.
4) Scan Local Drives : This invokes the application to scan local drives.

Options : This is standard Mac OS (Keep in Dock, Open at Login, Show in Finder).
Hide : This is standard Mac OS and hides the application.
Quit : This is standard Mac OS and quits the application.

Sopho’s Anti-Virus Mac

When a threat is detected the blue shield icon appends an exclamation icon on top of the shield to further notify the user something has been detected.

Post-Installation and Preferences

So you’ve got it installed what next? As a safety precaution I’d always recommend to run the Update Now selection under the Black Shield. The first time I ran it the AutoUpdate Status window showed that I was downloading 169 update files at about 5MB total. Upon completion it stated that Sophos Anti-virus has been updated with a date and time stamp.

After updating your system go through the preferences. The defaults should suffice but be aware that when a threat it is found it will only log the threat. You’ll have to open preferences and change that from Log only to Clean up threat, Move threat, Delete threat. Obviously it only logs threats not to mistakenly delete something that is vital to the system continuing operation while you decide the next step. Sometimes malware overwrites areas that when removed can cause the system to become unstable so be careful.

Scanning inside archived and compressed files will affect the speed and operation of your system which is why the check box is available to disable this feature. If you have a lot of .zip files (.tar, .rar, .sitx, etc) and after you complete a first time full system scan you may either want to disable this feature or make an exception for thos

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