Take your pick but don’t be too picky
Some people agonise over which security suite to buy, others just rush out and buy a big name like Norton, McAfee or Trend Micro. The truth is that no security suite is good in every department, and no security suite keeps 100% of the bad stuff away from you.
The better ones manage around 97 - 99%, as the last test from our favourite independent test lab shows http://www.av-comparatives.org/
- Avira 99.4
- McAfee 98.7
- Symantec 98.4
- Avast 98
- F-Secure 97.9
- Bitdefender 97.8
Two layers of security beat one every time
That's the plain truth. The first layer is a traditional internet security suite. We used to be fans of ESET Smart Security, and it remains a delight to install and live with, but the SPAM filter and firewall aren’t up there with the AV, and even the AV seems to be falling behind at 97.2.
Others swear by Kaspersky but it came in with an ordinary 94.7 in the av-comp test.
Big names like Trend Micro, Zone Alarm and CA are missing from the AV-comparatives list because they’ve been tested and found very wanting, or because the companies don’t like the test regime and don’t submit products (which amounts to the same thing in practice).
Check their references before you buy
There’s little difference in their detection rates, but there is a lot of difference in the way they work. F-Secure is a bugger to install and weighs down your system. McAfee and Symantec have smartened up their suites so they no longer hold your PC to ransom, but both were recently fined for auto-renewing users’ licences on the sly. Avira’s protection is superb but its Spam filter doesn’t integrate with Outlook. So it goes.
Bitdefender http://www.bitdefender.com/ may be last in the top six but it has all the right ingredients, is competent in every area, users can choose the interface that suits their technical ability, and you can get a 3-user/ 2 year licence for as little as $50. It has an easy-on-the-eyes interface and lets you choose a level of deatil that suits your technical ability.
Adding the Extra Layer
The second layer of protection should be complementary, that is it should detect suspect behaviour rather than check signatures which the traditional suites do so well. In this realm, Prevx3 (US$30/year) http://www.prevx.com/ is the undisputed champion – read about it here http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346861,00.asp.
This combination of security layers gives us far better protection than any single suite can offer. As a bonus, Prevx3 is as light as a feather so your PC won’t feel the extra load. Bitdefender is a bit more heavy-handed but it sorts out the Spam with great accuracy. And it blocks all those UPS and Western Union Trojans, and it has phishing protection and it all works really well. And you can burn a rescue disk. You see, it can be done.
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