One of the reasons that many people love Macs over Brand X is that they don’t get as many viruses or malware. Even so, Apple has your back with a piece of system software called XProtect Remediator. According to blogger Howard Oakley, that software now proactively protects your Mac by scanning and removing malware “whenever it gets a chance”.
XProtect Remediator arrived with macOS 12.3 in March of 2022. If your Mac is currently running macOS Catalina (10.15), Big Sur (11), or Monterey (12), the software is actively protecting your Mac. Oakley says that “XProtect Remediator consists of executable code modules which both scan for and remediate detected malware“. There are 13 modules in total, orchestrated by XProtectPluginService.
Per Oakley’s article on his Eclectic Light blog, the scans are “most likely to take place when your Mac is awake but doing little other than background tasks, such as routine backups, and receiving incoming email as it arrives. For those running these recent versions of macOS this represents a big step forward. It also dispels any doubt as to whether this new malware protection has gone live yet: it’s both alive and scanning actively already.“
There’s one more benefit of XProtect Remediator; it eliminates the need to purchase a third-party malware tool for your Mac!
