The free Mac antivirus market continues to expand with Comodo joining Sophos in releasing a free antivirus program for Mac users. Comodo Antivirus for Mac isn’t yet a finished product, but a public beta has been released for the purpose of testing ahead of a general release.

Comodo Antivirus for Mac offers the usual protection offered by antivirus solutions: real-time protection in the form of scanning all files as they are accessed, plus scheduled and manual scanning, with two levels of scan available: critical, covering areas likely to harbour infections, and full, which scans the entire hard drive. There’s a quarantine section for suspicious files, full logging and support for both scan profiles and tweaking of scanner settings.

The program can be password-protected to prevent other users from fiddling with settings, while a menu bar icon gives you quick and easy access to Comodo’s main window while also serving as a status icon. The user interface is identical to its more established PC counterpart, and the program works in exactly the same way.

Comodo Antivirus for Mac 1.0 Beta Build 73 requires an Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later, and will continue to be free once the program moves from beta to a final release, just like the Windows version.