Using a free mac antivirus in theory should be adequate enough but with the rise in popularity of Macs the market for attacks is widening by the day.  The bigger the market, the more chance virus developers will exploit this as an opportunity to make some money.  Windows is also more secure than ever before with it’s Windows 10 release. This could also cause virus writers to move away from Windows and to start focusing their time on attacking Macs much more.

Macs are known to be very secure due to their Unix-based operating system and their integrated Gatekeeper software but they aren’t completely safe. Some of the worst viruses in history have effected Apples operating systems.

It definitely comes down to the consumer’s choice of actions on their Mac, if you are going to be processing images and videos, playing games and tinkering around with iTunes (with minimal internet access) a free mac antivirus could suffice.  However, if you’re accessing the internet frequently every day, processing online payments or logging into your internet banking, a paid version will definitely be necessary. Why? Paid versions don’t just include basic scanning and quarantining but also browser protection, financial security software, advanced firewalls and often anti-spam tools. These all help to prevent hackers from accessing your personal and private data.