User guide

Product Review: Mac Security ‐ July/August 2014 www.av-comparatives.org
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Sophos Antivirus for Mac
Additional features
Phishing protection
Installation
The first page of the installer informs the user
how to find help, and how to uninstall the
product. The only option is which hard disk to
install the product to. The program can be
removed from the computer using the
“Remove Sophos Anti-Virus” icon in the
Applications folder. This is explained at the
beginning of the Setup Wizard.
We found the information on uninstalling and
finding help to be useful.
Main window
Sophos Antivirus for Mac does not have a
main window, i.e. a window that provides
access to all the program’s features. Instead,
there are separate windows for Updates,
Preferences, Scans and Quarantine.
Subscription information is not applicable, as
the program is free. Help can be started from
the Help menu.
Mac menu bar
Menus in the Mac menu bar are Sophos Anti-
Virus, File, Edit, Scan, Window, and Help.
Sophos installs its own System Tray icon,
which can be used to run updates and scans,
change preferences, and view quarantine.
Finder context menu
A scan entry is added to Finder’s context
menu, so files, folders and drives can be
scanned by right-clicking them.
Maintenance
Signatures can be updated from the Sophos
Anti-Virus menu or System Tray icon. There is
the most minimalist of status displays
provided by Sophos. If real-time protection is
turned off, the Sophos system tray icon turns
from sharp black to light grey. If the icon is
clicked, the first entry at the top of the menu
(also in light grey) reads “On-Access Scanning
is Disabled”. There is no additional
information on how to reactivate the
protection.
We regard the “status display” as so
minimalist that it is actually pointless.
Non-administrator access
To change protection settings, all users must
enter administrator credentials, regardless of
the account used to log on to the Mac.
This is as it should be, in our opinion.