Do Mac Users Need Antivirus? A Guide to AV, EDR and XProtect
Summary
A Huntress author explains how antivirus differs from EDR and argues Mac users should block known threats. He says XProtect may suffice for personal use but may not be robust enough at scale.
Key points
- The author describes antivirus as using signatures, hashes and developer identifiers to block known malware before execution.
- EDR is described as detecting behavior and taking remediation steps, complementing AV by looking for techniques rather than only known indicators.
- The author recommends some form of AV for Mac users as macOS becomes a larger target for threat actors.
- He says Apple's XProtect may suffice for personal Mac use, but in his view is not robust enough to fully protect users at scale.
- At publication, Huntress's macOS agent monitored persistence mechanisms; the company said it was considering managed AV and developing a managed EDR offering.
Article Details
- Topic
- Antivirus and endpoint detection and response for macOS
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Huntress macOS agentThe goal is for the Huntress macOS agent to keep as close parity to our Windows agent as possible. Of course, there are nuances with macOS, specifically installation, the multitude of prompts to the user if theMicrosoft Defender for EndpointExtending Threat Coverage on Macs with XProtect and Microsoft Defender for EndpointXProtectof signatures. These signatures may be based on different things—written Yara rules (as seen in XProtect), file hashes (sha1, sha256, md5), team or developer identifiers (a 10-character ID required by Apple to