Pros & Cons
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- Speedy initial malware scan
- Very good phishing protection score
- Strong reputation among tech experts
- Now includes identity protection features
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- Identity protection is limited
- No test results from independent labs
Malwarebytes Premium Security for Mac Specs
| Behavior-Based Detection | |
| Malicious URL Blocking | |
| On-Access Malware Scan | |
| On-Demand Malware Scan | |
| Phishing Protection |
It’s true that writing malware to attack Macs is more challenging than for PCs, but clearly, some coders relish that challenge. Mac malware exists, and going without Mac antivirus protection isn’t smart. Malwarebytes has a reputation for wiping out malware even when other utilities fail, and Malwarebytes Premium Security offers full protection for your Mac, scanning files on access, on demand, and on schedule. However, the labs don’t vouch for its efficacy. Norton 360 Deluxe, by contrast, holds perfect scores from two independent labs, while Bitdefender Antivirus earns one perfect and one near-perfect score. If independent verification is important to you, pick one of these two Editors’ Choice winners.
How Much Does Malwarebytes Premium Security Cost?
A single year’s antivirus subscription, for both Windows and macOS editions, is commonly priced at just under $40 per year. Another group comes in at just under $50. Malwarebytes splits the difference, with a yearly subscription of $44.99. More than half of the macOS antivirus utilities that offer a three-license subscription charge $59.99 or more; a three-pack of Malwarebytes goes for precisely $59.99.
Malwarebytes' multi-device pricing is more flexible than most. You can order from two to 20 licenses, at a price of $39.99 plus $10 per license. Thus, paying $79.99 per year gets you five licenses, and a 20-license pack is $229.99. With multi-device subscriptions, you can install Malwarebytes on Macs or Windows boxes, your choice.
The Malwarebytes Plus edition adds VPN protection. Its price is $47.99 plus $13 for each additional device for more than five devices. Pricing for five or fewer devices is a little screwy. You pay $72.99 to protect two devices and $79.99 to protect three. A four-device subscription costs $92.99, while five runs you $99.99. I’ll cover the VPN component when I review the top-tier Malwarebytes Ultimate bundle.
With Norton, you pay $119.99 per year for five cross-platform licenses. You get VPN protection with no bandwidth limits at this level, along with a full panoply of other security suite features. McAfee Total Protection also costs $119.99 per year for five licenses. It doesn’t offer the unlimited licenses you used to get with McAfee AntiVirus Plus, alas. You do still get the option to install protection on macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, or ChromeOS devices. As you can see, there's a lot of variation in pricing.
No money in the budget for antivirus? No problem! You can install and run Avast One Basic, AVG AntiVirus, or Avira Free Antivirus on your personal Macs without paying a penny.
If you're stuck with an antique Mac or legacy software that won't run on current versions of macOS, Malwarebytes may not be the best choice. Like ESET Cyber Security, it requires Big Sur (11) or later. Mac antiquarians will be pleased to know that ClamXAV, K7 AntiVirus, and Panda Dome Essential all go back more than 10 years, to Yosemite (10.10).
Getting Started With Malwarebytes
On the Windows platform, Malwarebytes is a popular solution when persistent malware resists removal by your standard antivirus tool. Tech support agents from other security companies have been known to enlist help from Malwarebytes when their own app fails. I've been able to see it in action by infecting a test system and then challenging Malwarebytes to clean it up, using my hand-coded tools to verify its success. I’m not nearly as well-equipped to test the efficacy of macOS antivirus tools, but Malwarebytes does rate very highly in my phishing protection test.
As with Malwarebytes Free on Windows, you can download the Mac program and run a cleanup scan without paying anything. That can be handy if another antivirus utility detects a threat but fails to fully eliminate it, or if a pernicious infestation prevents you from installing antivirus software. Paying for the premium edition gets you real-time protection, automatic updates, and blocking of adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs).
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)The main window of the Mac antivirus now almost precisely duplicates that of Malwarebytes Premium Security on Windows. As in the previous version, a simple left-side menu lets you choose the main dashboard or the app’s settings. New with the latest version is a menu choice for identity protection, which I’ll discuss below.
Along the right-hand side, a large panel provides advice from the Trusted Advisor component. If your protection score hasn’t reached 100%, Trusted Advisor lets you know how to improve it. On my test Mac, it advised installing all macOS updates and running a scan for exposed personal information. Doing so brought my score from 87% to 100%.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)Three panels stacked in the middle let you access Scanner, Real-Time Protection, and Detection History. A larger panel below those three represents the VPN. Unless you’ve paid extra for the VPN component, this feature won’t be available.
Malware Protection Lab Testing
The independent antivirus testing labs test Windows antivirus tools in a variety of ways, many of which closely resemble real-world malware-attack situations. Two of the labs I follow also test and evaluate macOS antivirus programs. When I first began covering antivirus on the macOS platform, I only included appearing in test reports from at least one lab. At present, the majority of macOS antivirus companies, including Malwarebytes, don’t participate in macOS testing with either lab.
With so few purveyors of security participating in Mac antivirus testing, I can’t really fault any individual antivirus merely for a lack of test results. Even so, I’m impressed by those that not only appear in test reports from both labs but also attain a pair of perfect scores. These paragons of malware-fighting virtue are Avast, AVG, and Norton. These three earned a perfect 18 points from AV-Test Institute and reached 100% protection in tests by AV-Comparatives. Also impressive are Avira and Bitdefender, which reached a perfect 18 with AV-Test and came close to the maximum with AV-Comparatives.
Hands On With Malwarebytes
Most Mac-centric antivirus programs include the option to scan your entire Mac for malware. Many also offer a quick scan that just looks for active malware and malware traces in common locations. However, a full scan is counter to the Malwarebytes philosophy. The company's thinking goes like this: If you really have an infection, the quick scan will see that there's a problem and remediate it. All a full scan could find beyond that is static malware that's inert and not doing any immediate harm.
Indeed, a scan of the Mac that I use for testing finished in about 90 seconds. That's fast, considering that the average quick scan time for recent Mac antivirus programs is about 6.5 minutes. The average time for a full scan by current macOS antivirus apps is 50 minutes.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)Malwarebytes doesn’t promise to do anything about Windows-centric malware. That makes sense, given that a program written for Windows can’t even run on macOS. I copied my Windows malware samples to a sensitive area on the test Mac and verified that Malwarebytes didn't touch them.
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My company contact confirmed that this is the expected behavior, saying, “The way our engine works is that threats have to be in their installed state for us to be able to detect them. Our signatures are written with the location of that specific malware for detections to occur.”
To see antivirus protection in action on the Mac, I had to download the official EICAR test file and then, per instructions from my Malwarebytes contacts, move it to a folder that Malwarebytes considers sensitive. As you can see in the image below, Malwarebytes correctly quarantined the test app.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)On the Mac, Malwarebytes runs a scheduled scan every day by default. You can edit the schedule to run scans at intervals from an hour to a month. It’s also possible to create multiple schedules, a feature that’s more useful when you can choose different configuration options for different scheduled jobs. ESET, McAfee, Trend Micro Antivirus, and Webroot Essentials also include scheduling, with a regular scan scheduled by default.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)Browser Guard for Web Protection
Whether free or Premium, on Windows or macOS, Malwarebytes provides web protection through the Browser Guard extension. You can easily install Browser Guard for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. A Safari edition is available separately from the Mac App Store. I used the Chrome edition for testing.
The Browser Guard extension blocks ads and trackers on the websites you visit. A numeric overlay on the toolbar icon shows the number of items blocked on the current site. You can click that icon for details, including a list of blocked items, and you can allow individual ads or trackers on a per-site basis. Note that the add-on for Safari lacks some of these features, including the numeric overlay and the ability to fine-tune blocked items.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)More importantly, Browser Guard diverts your browser away from dangerous websites such as those hosting malware. It also detects and suppresses phishing websites. These are fraudulent pages that masquerade as bank sites, email accounts, shopping pages, and other sensitive sites. It’s possible to spot phishing fraud if you’re vigilant, but everyone has a bad day. If you take the bait and log in, the phishing fraudsters capture your login credentials, meaning they now own your account.
Unlike malware coding, creating phishing sites is a platform-agnostic attack. You can fall prey to a phishing scam on a Mac, a PC, an internet-enabled pizza oven, or just about any device with a browser.
To test phishing protection, I start by visiting websites that track such things and gathering hundreds of recently reported URLs. I make a point of including both verified frauds and pages so new they haven’t been rated. I copied my list, between 300 and 400 items, to four test systems: one protected by the antivirus undergoing the phishing test, and the other three using the protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. For Windows installations, I’ve coded up a handy program that launches each URL and lets me record a block, a miss, or an error. On the Mac, I copy and paste the test URLs into the browser.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)If any of the four browsers throws an error, that sample URL goes on the scrap heap. Also, if the page in question doesn’t clearly fit the profile for phishing, meaning it tries to steal your credentials, I discard it. Usually, I wind up with data for around 100 verified phishing URLs.
This test always uses the latest phishing frauds, so the samples are different every time I run it. I report both the detection rate of the antivirus under test and the difference between that score and what the three browsers attained. The most effective phishing defenders stand above all three browsers, naturally. At the other end of the scale, some score far below the built-in browser protection.
I tested Browser Guard in Chrome on both macOS and Windows, using the same samples. On both platforms, it mostly reported the pages as blocked due to phishing, though in a few cases, the reason given was reputation or riskware. When the dust settled, I found that two editions scored precisely the same, as expected.
The shared score of 96% detection is good, and it beats any of the three browsers alone. However, several competing Mac antivirus apps did significantly better. AVG, Avira, McAfee, Norton, and Webroot all scored a perfect 100% detection in their latest phishing tests.
New Identity Protection Features
As noted earlier, the left-side menu in the main Malwarebytes window has gained a new selection since my last review. Clicking Identity Protection brings up a page with two options: Digital Footprint and Protect your digital identity. The latter requires a separate purchase of Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection. You can also opt for the Malwarebytes Ultimate bundle, which includes antivirus, VPN, and identity protection.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)With the basic Mac antivirus reviewed here, you just get the digital footprint scan, not the full identity protection package. To start the scan, you enter any email address that you use. You’ll have to prove it’s yours by supplying an emailed confirmation code.
(Credit: Malwarebytes/PCMag)When I tried this feature, the scan finished quickly and displayed an array of exposed personal information, with a button to Protect My Identity and a link titled Where was my information exposed. Clicking the former initiated a series of advice pages culminating in a recommendation to purchase the identity theft protection package.
I clicked to see where my information was exposed and got a list of three breached sites, each with six or seven personal data items exposed, which Malwarebytes counted as 20 breaches. Three sites seemed low to me, and indeed, running a similar scan with my password manager produced a list of more than 40 sites with breaches.