VirusBarrier x5: Protect your Mac

Intego’s VirusBarrier is a full featured, polished Anti-Virus application for Mac OSX – it can easily scan internal and external hard drives, files and folders, and is the first anti-virus application on the Mac platform to scan your iPhone or iPod touch – but do Mac users really need anti-virus protection?

Well, in theory, yes. In the past few months, there’s been various reports of the increasing number of trojans  currently active on the Mac platform, currently lurking in torrent downloads of Photoshop and iWork, and while they do no harm (at the moment, at least) they could do in the future. Apple also stated recently that “AntiVirus software may offer additional protection” to Mac users. And if you’re someone who constantly switches between Mac & PC, whether at home or at work, you’ll want to protect yourself from any Windows viruses that my lurk on your system.

Well, that’s where Intego’s VirusBarrier x5 comes in. VirusBarrier sports a clean and easy to use interface that you can get used to in no time, and makes scanning folders, drives and applications a snap. To start a scan, simply select what to scan and let VirusBarrier do its magic.

One of the really handy features of VirusBarrier, is that it constantly checks for viruses in the background, even when the application isn’t open thanks to it’s Real-Time Scanner technology – and scanning files and folders in the background has no real effect on your system resources – which is very nice.

VirusBarrier also scans all incoming and outgoing emails, and can even scan your iPhone or iPod touch, for any infected files that may exist and if VirusBarrier ever does find a file that is infected, it’ll move it to the quarantine immediately, and try to repair the file to its original state. And like any other Anti-Virus application, it allows you to schedule scans on your system, and receives up-to-date virus definitions via it’s NetUpdate Application (This application updates all of Intego’s products, and supplies new virus definitions to VirusBarrier.)

One of my favorite features of VirusBarrier has to be the Contextual Menu plug-in. If I ever download a file from online or from an email I have received, and don’t trust the source, all I need to do is right-click on the file and scan it with VirusBarrier, right from the Finder, a very handy feature!

Overall, VirusBarrier is a fantastic anti-virus application for Mac OSX, even though some Mac users may not think it’s necessary. It’s handy if you switch from PC to Mac on a regular basis, and can help keep your system in good health by eradicating any infected files that may be on your system (It even eradicates the Conficker worm from a few months ago!).

Even though there are a few anti-virus applications for Mac OSX, VirusBarrier is less resource hungry than the others, and is a lot easier to use in my opinion. VirusBarrier is available from Intego’s online store for £49.99 and includes 1 year of Virus Definitions via the NetUpdate application. You can renew your license from just £20. Intego also makes various other Internet security applications, including NetBarrier, ContentBarrier and FileGuard.