The effectiveness of Apple’s built-in anti-malware features have been questioned, however, and some security experts recommend strengthening the defences by adding in a third-party antivirus package. System and security updates are installed automatically using the macOS update process. These features are essentially invisible to the user, other than configuration options and alerts. Finally, Apple provide the “Malware Removal Tool” (MRT). Then there is “XProtect”, which checks files against known-malware signatures. Firstly, there is “Gatekeeper”, which warns when apps without a digital signature (i.e. In addition, it should be noted that Apple themselves ship some anti-malware capabilities within macOS.

Moreover, Apple Mac security needs to be considered in the wider context of other types of attacks.

Whilst it is certainly true that the population of macOS malware is very tiny compared to that for Windows and Android, there have still been many instances of macOS malware getting into the wild. It is an often-heard view that macOS computers don’t need antivirus protection.

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