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Virus Program, Firewall, Backup Program
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Aug 2006
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Offline
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I am switching from PC to Mac now and have a question. I know in the Mac field there are far fewer virus issues but I assume that still some type of virus program is needed as well as a firewall. Is this true and if so which one is best? With the PC I use Norton for viruses, zonealarm for firewall.
As well, I am always careful about hard drive backups. I do them to DVD-R. On the PC I have used PC Backup but mostly use Acronis. What is a good backup program for the Mac or is this built in?
Thanks in advance for any help.
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Administrator  Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
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OS X comes with a very effective firewall, so no third party app is needed. There are a number of antivirus apps out there, both free and commercial. ClamAV is highly regarded, and is free. I use Norton Antivirus (provided by my college) and it's good too (though you'll probably also find tons of people who say it hosed up their Macs).
I don't have an opinion on backups at the moment, but someone will doubtless chime in soon on that subject.
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Glenn -----
OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: London, UK
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Offline
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ClamXav is the easy-to-use Mac version of ClamAV, fwiw.
I forget, but isn't Backup a part of the system or is it .Mac only? If it is part of the system, it will be adequate for backing up to DVD. There is better software out there, but if it comes with the system, you may as well give it a try.
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Moderator  Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
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There are no known viruses for the Macs and only a handful of trojans (most of them just proofs of concept). Anti-virus programs are usually not necessary.
The built-in firewall of OS X will do just fine, it can be adjusted further by 3rd party programs (or the command line), but this is usually not necessary either. All you have to do is start it with the push of a button and open extra ports if necessary (if a service is activated in OS X, its port is opened automatically).
There are numerous backup programs, some of which you may already know. I typically use Tivoli Storage Manager, but I don't think this is of much use to you. SuperDuper, Silverkeeper and Carbon Copy Cloner are probably less known as there is not PC version for them. Another piece of software you might know from the PC world is Retrospect. There are many more, command line applications as well (rdiff-backup for instance), but I have decided to stick to applications with a gui.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Dec 2002
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According to Symantec:
Simply put, at the time of writing this article, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X.
We use Macs and Linux machines heavily in our company and none of these have any kind of anti-virus software installed. If you feel naked without an antivirus package, try clamAV.
We do have the default firewall enabled (Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing). So no third party software required.
In regards to backup, we use an Enterprise version of Retrospect from EMC Insignia. However, I would not recommend this outside the corporate world as the user interface is terrible. Try Chronosync. Haven't used it myself, but it gets a lot of mention. SuperDuper is another option.
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