Macworld - USA (2019-10)

October 2019 • Macworld 101

BUYING GUIDE

app we’ve reviewed. In other words, your Mac will

need to be left overnight in most cases – and on

a system with terabytes of files even that might

not be enough. Waiting this long if you’re worried

your system has a malware infection simply isn’t

acceptable, and is something Sophos needs to

improve. Even worse, subsequent full scans were

equally slow, so it appears Sophos Home Premium

doesn’t include the technology to know which files

haven’t been changed since the last scan. This is

deployed by some other anti‑malware scanners and

means an initial full scan lasting several hours can

be reduced massively for subsequent scans.

However, CPU usage throughout the scan

was very light indeed throughout, troubling only

between 10 ‑30 percent of four of the eight virtual

CPU cores on our i7 2.8GHz Mac.

Unleashing malware

Next, it was time to unleash the 26 recent Mac

malware samples onto our test bed virtualized Mac

To start a scan on the Mac itself,

click the menu icon in the pop-up

window, and select the option

October 2019 • Macworld 101

BUYING GUIDE

app we’ve reviewed. In other words, your Mac will

need to be left overnight in most cases – and on

a system with terabytes of files even that might

not be enough. Waiting this long if you’re worried

your system has a malware infection simply isn’t

acceptable, and is something Sophos needs to

improve. Even worse, subsequent full scans were

equally slow, so it appears Sophos Home Premium

doesn’t include the technology to know which files

haven’tbeenchangedsincethelastscan.Thisis

deployedbysomeotheranti‑malware scanners and

means an initial full scan lasting several hours can

be reduced massively for subsequent scans.

However, CPU usage throughout the scan

wasverylightindeedthroughout,troublingonly

between 10 ‑30 percent of four of the eight virtual

CPU cores on our i7 2.8GHz Mac.

Unleashing malware

Next, it was time to unleash the 26 recent Mac

malware samples onto our test bed virtualized Mac

To start a scan on the Mac itself,
click the menu icon in the pop-up
window, and select the option