That makes perfect sense, given that in a business setting the IT department manages security remotely.
In a consumer setting, this lets you install protection for any friend or family member and take care of problems that arise without paying them a visit or tediously trying to talk them through a solution over the phone. The Dashboard displays your protected devices and offers two ways to extend your protection. You can share a link via email or install Sophos on the current device. #Sophos antivirus for mac home edition free install# When you select a device, you get a page with five tabs: Status, History, Protection, Web Filtering, and Privacy. The Status page features five large panels representing protective components. Free users can work with Antivirus Protection and Web Protection-the other three are Premium-only. History displays a list of everything Sophos has done to protect you, with an option to filter on different event types.
Privacy is irrelevant, because Webcam and Mic Protection, the only features on that page, are not for free users. #Sophos antivirus for mac home edition free for free# Note that even paying users don’t get Mic Protection on the PC. Finally, Web Filtering lets you configure the parental control system, which I’ll discuss later.
That leaves the Protection tab, the place where everything happens. This tab has three sub-tabs: General, Ransomware, and Web. Ransomware Protection is reserved for paying customers. Windows users see another page called Exploits, but all features on that page are Premium-only. A few other scattered features such as AMSI Protection are specific to the Windows edition.
The most interesting item missing on the Mac is the feature called Download Reputation. On Windows devices, this feature works to double-check files that the regular real-time protection system doesn’t catch. It looks up each download in an online reputation database that considers the source website, content, and feedback from other protected computers. If the reputation is bad, Sophos offers to kill the download. That feature proved effective on Windows, but it doesn’t appear in the macOS edition. You can also reach the General tab by clicking Antivirus Protection on the Status tab. Most users shouldn’t touch the controls on this page, as doing so would turn off various protective features.
The one exception is the scheduler-if you like, you can set Sophos to run a full antivirus scan on any days of the week. The Web tab (also reached by clicking Web Protection on the Status tab) similarly contains settings that you shouldn’t turn off. Since all configuration happens in this online dashboard, your friends and family members can’t mess up their antivirus installation. They can’t turn off the antivirus just because they suspect it added latency to an important game, or made a video laggy. They simply don’t have access to the controls. You can even launch a scan of the remote computer if necessary. It’s quite a different setup from most antivirus utilities. Sophos installed in a flash on the MacBook Air I use for testing. The product was ready to use, including all the latest antivirus signature updates, within a minute or two. With Sophos Home Free on Windows, you see the local antivirus agent, but all logging and configuration happen online. The Mac takes miniaturization to another level entirely. It has no main window, just a tiny pop-up invoked by clicking its icon. The pop-up reports security status, lists recent activity, and serves as a progress display when you’re running a scan. From its menu, you can manage your devices, view all activity, or configure preferences selecting any of these three sends you to the online dashboard.
The Windows antivirus always runs a full scan, while the default on a Mac is a quick scan.