*** The Official macOS Catalina thread ***

Probably means you're running Defender though, which isn't too shabby.

I use BitDefender but not switched on and active - I use it like Feek says, for periodic scans. The main reason I use it is because I don't want to be responsible for passing on anything dodgy to anyone else by accident. Low risk, but it would be embarrassing given security is core to what I do. It's a risk judgment at the end of the day isn't it. For what it's worth, I only ever tend to find stuff in my PST archives.

Certainly looks that way. I guess my habit of carrying out periodic anti-malware checks can now cease. The anti-virus side of Avast wasn't of interest :)

On another note... I've carried out a Time Machine backup. It's encrypted and going onto a MacOS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) external drive, with that apparently being the best disk format to choose. However, it transferred the 80GB in around 2.5 hours (sustained upwards of ~160MB/s speeds on a separate test), but has reached ~50% encryption after 7 hours. When I've looked this up, people keep saying "it'll be done in 30 minutes" using this format, without always being explicit on their file size. It doesn't give any time estimate till completion.

Format and encrypt the drive first rather than have it encrypt as it goes along. Honestly, improves the performance of the backup massively.
 
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Here's what I mean:

Format the Drive
Use disk utility to erase the drive as encrypted.

2020-08-07P1.png


Configure Timemachine
Then configure TimeMachine selecting Encryption. As the drive is already encrypted it runs tons faster.

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As you can see mine is now ripping through it.

2020-08-07P3.png
 
In the time since I posted the above it's gotten about this much done.

That's exactly how I've done it! However, it has done about 25% in the last two hours with what looks to be about a third left. I'll just leave it be for now.

That is one of my concerns here too if I'm honest. Only one other person makes use of a Mac, with a lot of file sharing between our research group for data and the likes. I guess checking every so often won't exactly hurt at least.
 
Mine's all done too. I didn't actually mean to format mine when I was grabbing those screenshots :rolleyes::D Fortunately it's not really the backup system I use.
 
What anti-malware would people recommend?

Free version of MalwareBytes is perfectly fine (malware is the biggest problem with MacOS), get in the habit of running it regularly (doesn't take long to do a check, minutes) and run a separate 'admin' account to your standard account to aid elevating privileges (should do this on any device to be honest).

Running an AV is mostly a check boxing exercise, however it can reduce the spread of infected data (particularly mail) to other devices where it could cause infections, ie - MacOS to Windows etc.
Entirely you're choice to run an AV and most (standalone) Mac AV's are much alike; Avast do a free AV that isn't too painful to use

Either way, don't believe your Mac is secure and better than X, Y and Z devices/products and therefore you shouldn't run or do anything, as that's just being naive. It simply isn't and researchers like Patrick Wardle show that with various exploits (GateKeeper for example) in MacOS.

Always worth keeping an eye on Wardle's Twitter and blog (https://objective-see.com/blog.html) and he produces a few handy security apps that are worth looking at (https://objective-see.com/products.html) eg - OverSight.

Of course, feel free to do whatever you want with your device(s) but this is my two-pennies.
 
It looks like they've actually downgraded the Kernel to the previous version. :D

Reverted the reversion and updated the update. Standard :p

I didn't experience the Virtualisation issue, but if they've reverted due to a problem at least they're making it work again. I'm against fan noise so running ESXi on NUCs haha.
 
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