Start a conversation about antivirus software with most Mac users and they probably won’t know a great deal about the subject. Viruses have traditionally been the domain of Windows PCs, and the perceived wisdom is that Macs don’t suffer from such problems.

While the threat that Mac users face is small, it may well increase with the growing popularity of the Mac OS. To protect your computer from online nasties Kaspersky has just released its latest antivirus software for Mac: Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac. Its also available as a FREE trial download.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac allows for two types of scan, Quick and Full. Both found threats on a test MacBook, but these were mostly Trojans with names like win32.exe and the like – hardly a genuine threat to the Mac user, as .exe files are Windows executable files. However, if you were to forward one of these to a Windows-using contact you’d not be liked so catching and deleting them on your Mac is, if nothing else, the community-spirited thing to do.

Live protection checks your emails as they come in and it’s surprising how much spam has a virus attached to it. You can also scan a single file by dropping it on the Virus Scan icon.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 for Mac accesses Kaspersky’s cloud servers for constant updates. The software chugs silently away in the background and on our MacBook the processor load wasn’t too harsh. The software itself is very easy to use and as well as malware detection offers protection while you are surfing to guard against phishing attacks.

As to whether you really need it or not that’s up to you. Running no protection at all is probably a bad idea, but then confirmed reports of a harmful Mac virus are, if not non-existent, then certainly very, very rare.

What do you think? Add your comments below…