Need advice on what antivirus/security measures are recommended for Macs

Question

Between us my husband and I have a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air.
I'm looking for guidance on what might or might not be useful, beyond what is standard on a Mac, to protect against viruses and improve security on our system.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Linc Davis wrote:
(1) Don't install any commercial anti-virus software. It's all useless garbage.
Not true, at least if you email or send files to Windows users. It won't do you much good if your Mac isn't compromised but theirs is by something you pass along to them. Any info about you on their computers is put at risk of exploitation. We live in a connected world, & like it or not we are all in this together.
(2) Use your administrator account (the first one you created) only for administrative tasks such as installing software.
This offers reasonable protection but some malware is potentially capable of exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities that allow privileges to be escalated to admin or even root level without a user's knowledge. And even if an exploit is confined to the domain of a regular user account it can still do damage or compromise information.
NEVER enter your administrator password when prompted to do so by an application UNLESS it's a built-in application, such as the Installer.
That would preclude the use of a great deal of commercial software that doesn't use Apple's Installer.app, including most Adobe products.
NEVER install any third-party software except by drag-and-drop into your Applications folder, or by download from the App Store.
Same as above: not everything users want or need uses Apple's installer or can be installed by a simple drag & drop. And obviously, if the system is already infected all bets are off: you can no longer trust Installer.app to be what it says it is.
NEVER run any program you receive as an unsolicited email attachment, even if you know and trust the apparent sender.
This does not apply only to attachments containing executable code, or even just to email. Apple has provided security updates to patch vulnerabilities that can be exploited just by clicking on links to maliciously formed web pages. This kind of attack is becoming more popular, in part because browsers send info about the client computer to the server that can be used to tailor the attack to the specific vulnerabilities of the platform, & in part because browsers increasingly rely on executing scripts & other instructions provided by web pages to render them.