Fortunately, good antivirus programs offer protection from all of these threats. Especially during a pandemic when your personal devices also act as your connect to your business, keeping your laptop, smartphone, and other devices safe is more important than ever. Nowadays, users should be concerned about ransomware, phishing attacks, and fraud protection. Of course, there are a host of other threats on the internet beyond viruses.

Above all, you shouldn’t simply eschew protection because you have gone for MacOS over Windows. Well, we’re here to tell you that while Macs may not get viruses as often as Windows machines, they can still get infected. Sophos Home is a free-for-personal-use application for Windows 7+ and OS X 10.8+.You might have heard that Macs don’t get viruses. Grab a copy of Avira Free instead.īut if you need something very simple, lightweight, which can protect multiple systems while still being easy to manage from a central console, then it should be on your shortlist. If Sophos Home worth your time? If you’re an advanced user, looking for the best free protection, maybe for a single machine, probably not. You’re then able to keep an eye on their current status, launch scans, check for attempts to access blocked sites, and more. You’re able to remotely launch a scan enable/ disable real-time protection, 'potentially unwanted applications' detection and web filtering block sites by category as a basic form of parental control add antivirus, website or application exceptions, and view recent device events.īetter still, you’re able to add other family PCs or Macs, up to a maximum of 10 (keeping in mind this is free for personal use only). Sophos Home is really intended to be managed from the web, and its central dashboard offers more control. While the main console has only a 'full scan' option, you can right-click any file or folder in Explorer and select 'Scan with Sophos Home' for a quick check. The engine offers real-time protection and web filtering for blocking access to dangerous sites. Okay, there are Help and About links, but no other settings or local actions you can perform.īut wait: this isn’t as feeble as it sounds. The Windows client has a 'Scan Now' button, for instance, which launches a full system scan, and - that’s it. Let’s just say, minimalism taken to a whole new level.

Sophos vs avast antivirus for mac