Guidelines Choosing Antivirus Software

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What is the best antivirus you should purchase.

This is a question we all need to answer: What is the best antivirus.

We think there is no need to emphasize again how important it is to control our sensitive data or our financial information from online threats. In a world where cyber attacks come from anonymous sources and crisis management is inevitable, we need to understand that no one is safe.

Since employees bring their own personal devices into the workplace, laptops and mobile devices, information security becomes personal responsibility.

This growing tendency is a challenge not only for the companies, but for each individual that mixes personal life with the professional sphere, and needs to find a way to keep all safe.

Therefore, if we want to use personal computers at work, but also in the private or public space, we need to consider privacy risks and consequences that could appear.

How do we choose the best antivirus software.

Ok, we have established that every computer needs an antivirus solution, but there are so many out there.

To have a better picture on what the best antivirus is for you, there are 3 areas you need to approach:

First of all, you are not the first who asked this question. And for sure, you won t be the last.

For this reason, one of the easiest ways to find the best antivirus program is to check what other users have to say in security forums reviews and topics from various websites.

Some of the best places to find user opinions and product reviews on security solutions and antivirus software on the market are the good old security forums in the IT industry.

For example, the links below will send you to some of the best security forums in the online, where you can find a great number of user reviews and good or bad experiences users encountered with security products:

This website is based on questions and answers that become useful to the community of users. You can ask a question and receive answers or you can find answers to questions that have already been asked.

The website is designed so that you may be able to find quickly your areas of interest. To go fast to the security areas, insert in the Search bar the following: Computer Security, Anti-Virus Software or Internet Security will take you to the designated topics:

As you can see, these topics are followed by thousands of people, so it should not be too difficult to find what you re looking for. See what others have already responded on your topics of interest:

Read Quote of David J Slavik s answer to What is the best antivirus for a PC. on Quora

Read Quote of Justin Kemp s answer to Which is the best antivirus. on Quora

Read Quote of Pratyaksh Somani s answer to What are the best antivirus softwares for my PC. on Quora

This website is another place where you can share your knowledge on a variety of topics. It is at the same time a good place to find questions and answers for Internet and computer related security subjects.

That s why we recommend posing your security questions here, like What s the Best Antivirus..

For specific areas on Internet security, check these categories:

You read the available user reviews and the experiences others encountered after purchasing a certain antivirus. In this process, you probably changed your mind a few times.

But now that you have decided on the best product, maybe it s time to see what others have to say about the site they used to purchase the product.

For this, you can simply access the Trustpilot site and insert the website you want to use for your purchase in the required field. The search results will indicate the good or bad experiences people had with that website and it will give you a better perspective on this whole process.

PC Magazine is not just a testing agency, it is a complete guide to computers, a place where you find computer and Internet related products and services.

To check what security solution you should choose, access their website and use one of the following options:

Take a look at the top right corner and insert in the search field Best Antivirus. It should already be placed there for you.

This is the easiest way to reach Neil Rubenking s article, The Best Antivirus for 2015, where you can find 5 antivirus products selected as the best for 2015.

To have a better look at each review, select the corresponding product from the top list.

The second option to find the best security software for your system is to access Security from the top menu.

In this location, you have a few options to select the price you want to pay, the company you prefer or the category you need. The Category is useful if you look for something different, like a Parental Control product or an antispam tool.

Here again, the easiest way is to go to Best Antivirus Software tab in order to access the same article by Neil Rubenking, The Best Antivirus for 2015.

If we take a quick look at the article, we notice the 5 security products are Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus 2015, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2015, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2015 and McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2015. For each of them, you can see there is a review available.

If you access the review for the products, you will notice the available price, and a few final conclusions Pros, Cons and Bottom Line in case you don t have time to read the article.

If you continue to scroll down, you can check the main security features that were put to the test:

1. You have found the 5 best antivirus products.

2. You read the reviews. We know, it takes time, but it is an important decision.

3. You compare the products. Maybe your first selection criterion is the price. Or it is malware blocking capabilities.

4. You order to product and keep your system safe.

If you are in doubt about a certain product, you can see that most security products nowadays come with a trial testing mode, where you can use it for a month or so, and then make up your mind.

We recommend using the trial period for any product, because some of them may protect you very well, but they may affect your system s performance. And this is something you learn after a few weeks.

It s no problem if you test more than one security product, simply remember to keep only one of them on the system in any given period. Having more than one security product on the system leads to conflicts, slow downs or even system crashes, since they use the same system resources.

Before you install another product, make sure you have removed completely the previous software using the uninstall tool provided by the company. Choose wisely.

Gizmo s Freeware – Best Free Antivirus Software

This website is highly recommended for its security evaluation of free antivirus products. Though we recommend using a paid antivirus product, we need to mention there are out there very good free products that might just cover your security needs. Therefore, use the link above and check the presented solutions for a time, before you decide to go with a paid antivirus product.

Tom s Guide – Best Antivirus Software and Apps 2015

Another important security website to check if you are interested in online protection. The link above will send you to another antivirus evaluation, where only the best products have been taken into account. At the same time, you can also take a look at the free antivirus products tested.

Softpedia comes with a high number of security solutions, from very well established solutions to others, which are less known by the large public. Nevertheless, we think you should give them a chance and take a look at them. Maybe this is where you ll find your security solution.

The test centre from PC Advisor puts to the test about 21 antivirus products in the market for the UK public. That doesn t mean we can t check them out for ourselves and decide if one of them is good for us too.

We have reached the major certification and testing agencies, and it is important to see what they have to say about what is the best antivirus you can choose. After all, they are in business for some years and they can t afford to lose credibility, so checking these places should give you a pretty good idea on what to select.

To simplify things, we will demonstrate briefly how you can find the best antivirus for your Windows operating system.

This testing agency is an independent service provider in IT security that analyzes the latest malware, using the best security solutions available and informs the public on the top-quality results.

To check what security solution you should choose, access their website and follow these steps:

1. Right in front of you, there should be Test results according to area of application.

2. In the new window, select your Windows operating system and from the left column, choose the latest test results period. Then take a look at the security products displayed.

3. As you can see in the list, there are a great number of products.

If we take a look at the top of the list, we notice there are 3 main criteria:

For each criterion, there are 6 maximum points a product can obtain.

4. Let s choose for our example, Bitdefender Internet Security 2015.

5. In the list, the following criteria appear:

Protection – Protection against malware infections, which include 0-day malware attacks, including web and e-mail threats

Performance – Average influence of the product on computer speed in daily usage

Usability – Impact of the security software on the usability of the whole computer

To have an idea on each data, you can take a look at the right where the Industry average appears.

If you are not sure about a certain product, you can select from the top menu Tests Compare manufacturer results.

This way, you can compare the rest results of several antivirus products and choose the best for your operating system.

AV Comparatives is an Austrian based testing agency that assesses popular antivirus solutions and releases accurate reports and charts.

You can notice in the top menu a few tests that were run on the antivirus products:

Though we recommend taking a look at all the available tests, we think that starting with the Whole Product Dynamic Real-World Protection and Performance tests, is a good place to start. These 2 tests will give you most certainly a good idea on what the best security product is for your system.

This is probably the most important test you need to take into consideration, because it indicates the Protection Rate achieved by a certain product.

To quote the guys who run this test: all protection features of the product can be used to provent infection – not just signatures or heuristic file scanning.

Therefore, consider the test and then take a look at page 9 to check the results and compare the products that were put to the test. Look at those products that got over 99 in protection rate score.

This test gives an indication on the system performance while using a certain Internet security product. Nevertheless, users are encouraged to test a product on their own system.

To give you a clue on the system performance, the test run the following activities:

And the most important element was that PC Mark 8 Professional Testing Suite was also used to provide an industry recognized performance test.

Though we recommend going through the entire test, a simple look at pages 9 and 10 will give you an idea on what security products are in the green zone.

For example, the overview of performance scores from page 9 will shad some light on each product performance in file copying, archiving, installing, encoding, launching apps and downloading operations. Scroll down to page 10 and you can see the PC Mark 8 points achieved by each software.

If you are still not convinced on a product s abilities to keep you safe from malware, we recommend running another 2 additional tests: File Detection Test and Heuristic/ Behaviour test.

It is an important element you need to consider before purchasing an antivirus product. As in the other tests, the default settings were used and the on-access scanning is taken into consideration. At the same time, an additional False Positives test has been run, which is something you should consider in your final conclusion.

Again, though we recommend reading the entire test, if you take a quick look at page 7, you will notice the detection rates results. Here you can take into consideration the software that obtained at least a 99 score. Just to be on the safe side, scroll down to page 8 and see how the number of FPs and of course that the fewer they are, the better.

Heuristic/Behaviour or Retrospective/Proactive

This test is run by AV Comparatives once a year and includes behavioral routines, which evaluate the proactive protection capabilities of the products.

The main idea behind this test is to evaluate how antivirus products are able to detect new malware threats using heuristic techniques or behavioral protection measures.

Since new malware appears every day and there is always a time frame in which you are not protected, that is until the malware signature is sent to your antivirus product, this heuristic technology becomes the last line of defense against malware, therefore it is not something you should ignore.

If you don t have the time to go through the entire test, take a look at page 5 and again look for the products in the green area, that means these software solutions are capable to keep the system safe from new malware threats.

This test evaluates the protection against phishing attempts, which usually occur by e-mail or instant messaging, and lure the target into entering sensitive details on fake websites that look similar to the legitimate ones.

As in the previous tests, you can go directly to page 4 and see an overview of the percentages of blocked phishing websites, for each product tested. It is obvious in this case again that the first 3 places are to be considered.

For more information on a security product, you can continue to analyze the other test results in order to make sure you found a good product.

Virus Bulletin is one of the most reliable testing facilities and it frequently features analyses of a great number of anti-virus products, offering an objective point of view for any user that needs the best antivirus product.

Though the website may seem a bit intimidating at first, with that technical feeling all over, you can reach quite easily the comparative tests.

As you enter the website, you need to access VB100 in the top menu and select latest comparative from the drop-down menu.

If you scroll down and click full Windows 7 report, you can read the entire document, which contains many security details, like detection score, False Positives, stability rating, performance measures and the RAP Reactive and Proactive tests.

To make things easier for you, you can go in the same drop down menu and choose recent test summary or compare vendors to have a better picture on how each product scored in the test.

This way you can easily compare favorite products by looking at how they behave on Detection, Performance or even Proactive scanning technology.

This testing company is one of the most renowned independent evaluation facilities in the IT industry analyzing both consumer and business solutions.

To access the latest security report, access this location and open the latest available test from the Home Anti-Virus Protection, which is at the bottom of the page.

If you don t want to go through all the report s data, the first page gives an Executive Summary, which offers an idea on the products tested and their scores. Again, the reliable products will appear in the green area.

In the second page, you can see the conclusion of the report: Which was the best product..

If you continue reading the report, you will obtain other protection details, like the number of False Positives detected or the different levels of protection employed.

A number of graphical charts will make things easier for you.

After all these tests, no matter if we were on the testing grounds from AV Test, AV Comparatives or PC Magazine, you must have already noticed that some antivirus products always seem to come at the top.

And this is normal. It simply happens because these software providers in turn are in this business for a long time.

In our past blog posts we said it more than once:

To protect your system and your online information from security breaches, a set of security solutions and online safety guidelines should be followed.

But we know that many people still rely on one security solution to do the job.

For this reason, we need to make sure that when an antivirus software is selected, the user knows most possible breaches and access points for online criminals have been covered.

In the end, we need to make sure we are ready to respond to any malicious attack that might affect our private or work-related information, because at the end of the day everybody needs a good and reliable antivirus to keep a system secure.

What is the best antivirus for you and how do you choose one.

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Determine what you want to pay. Cost is an important factor in choosing virus protection software for your computer. Cost for this software ranges from free to more than 100.

Shop around computer stores for a wider selection of software. Although electronics stores have a large selection to choose from, many department stores now sell computer-related products.

Check compatibility. An older computer or operating system may not work with newer virus protection software.

Read all guidelines given with the anti-virus software. These guidelines often contain the minimum requirements for installing the software.

Ask store representatives for help in selecting the right software.

Find websites that are secure and trustworthy if you choose to download the software.

Visit the Better Business Bureau to see any complaints against businesses that have the virus protection software you are considering downloading.

Install the software according to the stated guidelines.

Locate these installation guidelines either on the website where you downloaded the software or on the packaging that came with the software.

Allow the software to use default settings. Most anti-virus software packages use the best settings to help find the most problems.

Update virus definitions. Virus protection software uses virus definitions as templates for discovering viruses, trojans and even spyware.

Renew the virus software license when necessary. Some software, especially free software, does not necessarily need to be renewed. Other virus protection software needs to be renewed after a certain period such as every 6 or 12 months.

Give us 3 minutes of knowledge.

Keep virus definitions up to date for the best virus protection.

Ask relatives for recommendations on the virus protection software they use.

Visit reputable software review websites for any information on anti-virus software that you might be considering.

Write down the current settings if you decide to change default settings on your virus protection software, so that you may change the settings back if the new ones don t work.

Read the fine print when downloading anti-virus software. Many free programs may contain banner and other ads in lieu of payment.

New computer systems often come with virus protection software. Be aware that this software sometimes is only a trial version and may need to be updated or renewed once that trial is up.