There are a wide variety of security products available to protect and defend your Mac against viruses, the Pirates, Ransomware and other types of malicious attacks.
Sophos might not be the first name that comes to mind, but that doesn’t mean its products aren’t worth considering. For the average consumer, the company sells a program called Sophos Home Premium.
Designed for macOS, Sophos Home Premium offers security protection organized into five different categories: virus protection, protection against malicious websites, protection against Ransomwareprivacy protection and malicious traffic detection.
A while ago, Sophos offered a free version of Sophos Home that included virus protection and website protection. At the end of 2021, the company stopped offering this version, leaving Sophos Home Premium as the only option for personal use.
You can use Home Premium completely free for 30 days with the free trial, but after that you’ll have to pay $37.46 for the first year and $49.95 for each subsequent year. For that price, however, you’ll be able to install the Software on up to 10 PCs and/or Macs.
In my case, I tried Home Premium on two different MacBook Airs, one with an Intel chip and the other with an M1 chip. I had no compatibility issues with the M1, so the product worked effectively on both machines.
Setup and setup
Installing and configuring Sophos Home Premium doesn’t seem like a problem at first, but then comes the confusion.
After installation, the Software It walks you through the process of granting the necessary permissions to operate. But then the setup stops without it being clear what to do next.
To continue, you need to log in to the Sophos Home web-based control panel and you will be able to configure each component of the Softwaresomething I knew I had to do after looking at the help documentation in line.
No icon appears in the Dock to start the program. You will see several icons in the Applications folder, but none of them do anything. Fortunately, there is an icon in the menu bar that lets you access the online control panel and other functions.
Once in the panel, you will be able to see and configure each of the five types of protection.
Antivirus protection offers real-time scanning of your local and network drives. Through the settings page, you can start a hand scanner or schedule it for a specific day or days or at a specific time.
By default, the program automatically deletes the malware it finds out, although you can ask it to quarantine the malicious items if you want to review or inspect them.
You can run a scan from the online control panel or from the program’s menu bar icon. Triggering a scan from the menu bar icon is the best option because you can choose a quick scan or a full scan and run the scan even if you are offline.
Web protection settings block known-to-spread websites malware, but you can add exceptions. protection against Ransomware try to prevent the malware detected encrypt your files.
Privacy protection alerts you to any unwanted attempts to access your webcam or microphone. And malicious traffic detection looks for programs trying to connect to a malicious server.
You can use the web filter setting to block websites based on specific domains, such as gambling, piracyillegal drugs, sex education, violence and weapons.
Does Sophos effectively detect malware? The program is tested as frequently as other more popular products. However, an analysis of Software AV-Test’s 2017 security update for macOS gave Sophos Home an excellent score in the areas of protection, performance and ease of use.
I also ran an EICAR test, which simulates a virus, and Sophos detected and blocked it with no problem. Website filtering worked fine when I tried to launch sites associated with blocked categories. Safari told me I couldn’t access them, but I was able to open those same sites with filtering turned off.
Verdict
Sophos Home Premium offers strong protection, but the setup process and cloud-only features are some of its weak points. It should offer a clearer setup process and the ability to do more locally.
Original article published in igamesnews UK.
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