OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

Antivirus for Your Server

Mac viruses and malware are fairly uncommon. Virus programmers tend to focus mostly on the several hundred million Windows PCs in the world. This situation, however, doesn’t let OS X off the hook.

In the previous edition of this book, Lion Server For Dummies (Wiley), I warned, “Mac malware has been appearing during the past few years, and one of these days, a big Mac-focused virus wave may hit.” In April of 2012, it did indeed hit. Newspaper and tech trade headlines screamed, “Over 600,000 Macs infected with malware.” The age of innocence was over.

Servers in particular are important computers to protect because an infected server can infect the other computers through your network. You can always load a generic Mac virus protection package on your Mac, but a malware product designed for Mountain Lion Server offers additional benefits.

Intego’s VirusBarrier Server (www.intego.com) automatically checks files located on and launched from a Mac server. VirusBarrier Server quarantines infected files it finds and sends an e-mail message to an administrator. It can also repair files that have been quarantined. Like all good virus packages, VirusBarrier Server automatically checks for and downloads updates of the latest virus definitions.

Mountain Lion Server’s e-mail server already comes with well-respected open source antivirus software, ClamAV. But if you want another layer of protection, use VirusBarrier Mail Gateway (included with VirusBarrier Server), which ...