malware and antivirus protection

Do not download anything in that category of products. They are scams.

Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community

None. Apple already has built-in Security.

see > macOS - Security - Apple

Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community delves a little bit into the history of "anti-virus" products, and explains how it grew from meeting a need for Windows PCs (which of course have nothing to do with Macs) to the multi-billion dollar behemoth it has become. It's an industry that capitalizes on fear, which is an extremely powerful and effective marketing technique. Even if one thoroughly examines the impervious nature of macOS their ultimate selling point is often "better safe than sorry."

Computing security cannot be reduced to a trite expression. It is not only a complete irrelevance, it disregards simple facts. Most if not all such products will increase your exposure to malware and related threats. You — and your Mac — are always better off without them.

Why? If you look through the post history of this site (which spans over a quarter century at this point) you will find the vast majority of Mac-related problems are directly caused by those products. Moreover, if a Mac user is successfully deceived into installing something nefarious or harmful, those Macs usually already have some kind of "anti-virus" and / or "anti-malware" product installed. They did nothing to prevent the user from taking actions that were inappropriate or damaging.

Mac malware (or just badly designed programs) are nothing new. You can, if you try hard enough, and foolishly choose to disregard the multiple warnings the Mac throws your way, install things that will hijack your browsing preferences (for example), protect it from imaginary threats that do not exist, or offer to "clean" your Mac of "junk" that is actually required for it to work. I can cite multiple examples of that even for products distributed by the Mac App Store.

And, if Apple made it impossible to install programs outside of the Mac App Store, a Mac would not be the useful appliance that it is. It would be more like an iPhone and less like a computer. At one time in the distant past computer users understood what they did and how they worked. Those days are fading fast. Today, people just want to load Facebook or Google or whatever. They have no idea why those products exist, and what's worse is that they don't care to find out. Such is the market Apple created.

Anyway I hope that answers your question. There are a lot of junk products available for the Mac for the simple reason that Mac users are enormously, embarrassingly wealthy. Certainly in the top 2% of wealth as measured on a worldwide scale. That makes us big fat targets for scammers that aren't in that top 2%. Couple that with the powerful motivating factor of fear, and you have a recipe for tremendous financial gain.

There is no website, no blog, no lobby group that advocates that you do not buy something. Why? There is nothing in it for them. You just read commentary from someone who advocates for you, the Mac user.

They want to take your money ... it's as simple as that.

As the others have mentioned, macOS has a number of anti-virus/anti-malware protections already built-in. Just keeping macOS updated should be all you need.

True, Macs can get malware, but these are plain annoying, but do not carry a destructive payload, like viruses do with Windows PCs.

If you run macOS Sonoma (currently the latest macOS version) the operating system runs on a "sealed" volume that cannot be written to ... so no virus, nor malware can get in to infect it.

The only anti-malware product, that gets recommended here, is Malwarebytes for Mac. However, in my experience, I have yet to have it detect any malware on my Macs ... mostly because they don't get any.

Fishoutawater wrote:

Could you elaborate on this please. I'm confused as to why there are so many products available for MAC. Thank you.

Because they make money on scaring you into believing you need them. Many also run advertisements on websites that pretend that they are scanning your computer and have found many viruses. Of course, they recommend paying them to get rid of a virus that you do not have. People will do irrational things when they are duped into thinking something bad will happen. You are free to search these forums using the Search tab on the top of the screen to see the many problems people have had using these types of software.

... I hope others will find this post.

Spread the word. We're at a significant disadvantage here, since no one is clamoring to finance advocacy of not wasting money on useless junk.

This site (ASC) is one of the few websites on Earth that doesn't exist for the sole purpose of trying to sell you something.