What Anti-virus Program Is Right For You?

Published: 2013-08-03. Last Updated: 2013-08-03 22:41:49 UTC
by Deborah Hale (Version: 1)
27 comment(s)

Recently I have been investigating different anti-virus software and trying to determine which is the best for home users and for businesses.
There are so many choices and so many different opinions of which are good and why.  One popular Internet Security website touts
Bit Defender as the best of the best with Kaspersky coming in second and Norton in a very close third.  Another popular website rates VIPRE
on top with Bit Defender in second followed by Kaspersky. Yet another site list Webroot, Norton and McAfee in that order. 

So what does a person do?  How do you determine which is the best and right for you? Is it price? Is it features? There are so many
different programs that it is confusing and perhaps even overwhelming. 

I would like to hear from our readers.  What do you think?  What anti-virus have you chosen for home or work and why?  Let us know
what you think.

 

 

 

 

Deb Hale

Keywords: Anti virus
27 comment(s)

Comments

I would think Windows users (or non-users, who had it pre-installed on a new PC) are already paying for Microsoft Security Essentials through the license fee, so I would at least use that, unless there was a really strong case for preferring one of the others. I think that is limited to 5 users per 'site' or similar. It succeeded in identifying a single, fresh malware sample when I once tried it; which Kaspersky, F-Secure and other major AV vendors at the time surprisingly missed. There are many other considerations however, such as rate of false positives, system performance with the scanner enabled, and management features especially in enterprise.

Anonymous

Aug 3rd 2013
1 decade ago

Try ESET NOD32
That's all I have been using for years.
I also have a site license for Trojan Hunter.

I use Spyware Blaster and that's all.

Anonymous

Aug 3rd 2013
1 decade ago

For Windows: Kaspersky. It was the only one that found a keylogger hidden in a video card's RAM. McAfee, Symantec, Trend, AVG and Sophos didn't.

For MAC: Avast AV.

Anonymous

Aug 3rd 2013
1 decade ago

In-house program that is classified. Anything out in the market place has already been broken by research institutions.

Andrew

Anonymous

Aug 4th 2013
1 decade ago

I use avira free version. I used to use the pay-for version, but keeping track of licences and expiration dates became too much of a pain. I also use clamav on the mail server, and 3 tiers of firewalls and a NIDS, and it wasn't until last week that we had a contagious infection of windoze laptops, which likely came from when a machine was off our network and only using its internal defenses. The infection was not too bad -- only 2 machines, but if was comprised of 2 trojans and an ad/spy-ware infection on both machines. One laptop was running xp-pro 32-bit, and the other was running w7 64-bit, so who knows. Anyway a nuke and restore from most recent known good image, followed by a full scan, which proved clean. Then restore the user's data files from the backup server, and one of the users had the infected files in their personal stuff, so I let the a/v delete those file and got a clean scan. Everything seems ok now.

Anonymous

Aug 4th 2013
1 decade ago

I use an interesting and useful antivirus program named "GNU/Linux". It installs easily from a boot CD that repartitions my system to remove all the vulnerable Windows software, then runs the PC with all the personal and business functionality I need.

Anonymous

Aug 4th 2013
1 decade ago

The real protection comes from installing the latest patches an updates and of course safe computing practices. Rarely should your AV have to detect anything, but is there if all else fails. For home use Microsoft Security Essentials - it's free and easy for any home user to operate. For business use Trend Micro - reporting and updating is all centralized so you can easily monitor the whole business. With AV protection sometimes one vendor will be quicker or provide a better cleanup, but next time it will be another vendor. Who is always first isn't nearly important as which product is more maintainable.

Anonymous

Aug 4th 2013
1 decade ago

F-Secure and Kaspersky. Unfortunately F-Secure is very expanive compared to Kaspersky, so many customers are moving to Kaspersky. F-Secure declared ina statement that "government spyware" like Finfisher will be treated as malware.

I try to avoid as much as possible AV from USA because I fear some kind of backdoor (even before the Snowden case) and very popular AV (such as Symantec).

Anonymous

Aug 4th 2013
1 decade ago

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

Anonymous

Aug 5th 2013
1 decade ago

Still using F-Prot, but I've been using it since the old BBS days. I've never had a problem and continue to renew it year after year. I don't think any of them are 100% perfect, but this is the one I'm most happy and comfortable with when I have to load Windows for any purpose at all.

Anonymous

Aug 5th 2013
1 decade ago

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