Google on Monday released a useful tool for OS X aimed at beefing up Mac security by making it easy to upload suspicious files for scanning. The software works in conjunction with the popular VirusTotal service which was designed to accept user-submitted suspicious files.

It’s simple to use and the whole experience is quite frictionless. After installing the free tool onto your Mac, you can simply right click on any file and selecting the pertinent option from the context menu to upload the file to VirusTotal for scanning…

Google says the software can be used for anything from quickly scanning the image files of running processes to triggering scans of remote URL content before saving it to disk.

The program uses VirusTotal’s public API to schedule uploads of files, “with the exact same limitations” that any public API user would experience. Google acquired VirusTotal back in September 2012.

Key highlights include:

• Drag and drop a file to the VirusTotal Uploader in order to scan it with over 50 antivirus solutions.

• Drag and drop a folder to the VirusTotal Uploader and schedule the analysis of its content.

• Drag and drop a Mac application to the VirusTotal Uploader.

• Allows you to “Open With” in finder the VirusTotal Uploader to scan a file.

As the Mac’s popularity continues to rise, the OS X platform is increasingly becoming the target of virus and malware makers so any user-submitted Mac files help researchers make use of VirusTotal’s backend to build stronger defenses.

Should you encounter any problems with VirusTotal Uploader, you can file a bug report here.

The8.52MB VirusTotal Uploader tool is now available to download to Mac systems running OS X 10.8 and 10.9 direct from the VirusTotal website. The application is available for Windows machines, too.