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The 3 Most Important Factors when Choosing the Best Antivirus

Posted by Chris Allard on Thu, Jan 22, 2015

Which antivirus is the bestChoosing which anti-virus protection is best for you isn't always that easy. There are a lot of options out there, with varying price tags. What makes one anti-virus program better than another? There are usually 3 important factors that you should judge them by.

One of the most obvious factors in your decision is how often does it detect a threat on the system and how thorough is its detection method? Also, how often does it present the user with false alarms. While it's good to be safe, false alarms condition the user to seeing messages from their anti-virus program, and make it more likely that a message will be ignored by the user. This brings up the second factor in your decision, which is how easy and intuitive is the software to use and manage? It may have plenty of strengths in it's performance and detection, but if you can't figure out how to schedule a monthly full pc scan, it's not going to provide the best protection. A third factor is the performance hit on the computer while the program is running a scan. When you are trying to get work done, or relax with some Netflix, you don't want your anti-virus software to get in the way. You just want it to quietly work, unless there is a problem. You can also compare the products by the features that each developer offers, though this should be a secondary part of your decision, as all the bells and whistles in the world can't make an antivirus software with terrible detection rates worth buying.

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When talking about security programs, there are a few basic terms for the packages that companies offer. Antivirus is just that, it protects your computer against viruses as long as it is kept up to date. Internet Security is usually only internet security features like anti-phishing and safe site alerts. Both browser manufacturers and security companies maintain lists of sites that have malware located on their servers. These sites will trigger an alert in the browser and in internet security suites. The third type of package offered is a combination of anti-virus and internet security suites, offering total protection for your computer. Some of these features are also included in other products, such as web mail and your browser, however it can offer more piece of mind and ease for some people to have everything all in a single package, which enhances the features of the browser and webmail service that you use. 

In order to determine which anti-virus protection program you should use, we will compare some of the most popular products out there.

Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee's (by Intel) virus protection offerings are both widely known paid anti-virus programs. Both offer good detection rates, however consumers and testers have noted that both seem to have a negative impact on your system's performance, by causing it to run slower than it would with other programs, and they tend to trend higher on tests for false positives. Empirically, many IT people dislike the system instability that these home-user products seem to inherently cause with the scores of (usually unnecessary) cleaning and system maintenance tasks that they pack into their software. Included with all of these features is a meandering and complicated labyrinth of menus and lists of options that don't offer the clearest definition of what the options actually do. Norton in particular, seems to desensitize users with it's pop-up messages about high CPU usage and "possible" threat notfications. Crying wolf, so to speak, usually just makes users frustrated and in turn, is less effective when notifying of a real and serious threat. We do not recommend these suites so we will not compare their features here.

ESET, BitDefender, and Kasperky Lab's security suites (antivirus protection, anti-malware and internet security features) all score well in all three areas. This leads us to the next way to compare the products. Many people have multiple devices, including Windows and Mac pc's and smart phones. All three offer a multiple device subscription that will protect around 5 total devices. This means that if you have a Windows pc, a Mac, and a couple of smartphones, you can get all of them protected with the same product. All three have Android apps, but Kasperky Lab's package includes a safe browser for Windows Phones and iOS devices. Given the recent explosion of malware targeting Android devices, it is a good idea to consider a package that will offer virus protection on all of your devices.  

ESET's offerings seem to have better "in-the-wild" threat protection based on some studies, which simply means that when the software encounters a threat that has never been detected before (many viruses and trojans are modified in order to get by security software) it has a higher likelihood of stopping the threat. This is in part due to the strength of their heuristic analysis of files and data streams.

Bitdefender's main differentiating feature is its almost imperceptible performance. It is very fast when doing scans and offers almost no performance degradation when using your computer if a task is running. They have a feature called "auto-pilot" built in which sets the program to run with the most recommended settings and features enabled. This makes for a very mindless user experience, you simply tick the box and you can be pretty sure your well-protected from then on.

As for additional security features, most of the products offered by Kaspersky Labs include a virtual keyboard that will help you defend against a keylogger gathering your banking or other sensitive credentials. We've found this to be one of the nicest add-on features available for a worry-free web experience since you never have to worry about interception of your sensitive passwords and personal info. This feature, combined with their free, secure password manager included in the Internet Security product and up makes it a totally comprehensive security software that needs little configuration to give you immediate protection. (Quick general tip: don't kill yourself with making up dozens of ridiculous passwords, since it may be easier to crack them than you think)

Brilliant password strength cartoon

All of Kaspersky Labs' offerings also include anti-phishing features. Phishing is where an attacker will try to obtain information through conversations, or getting you to click on a link that is disguised to look as though it's a safe link to your bank or social media account. Anti-phishing protection is one of the features that is essential for users to have, if they are connected to the internet. The more comprehensive security suites also include parental controls that work very well and aren't easily disabled when configured properly (for all the kids that think they're smarter than their parents with computers ☺).

If a virus or other type of malware does gain access to your system, Kaspersky Labs, like many other vendors offers a rescue CD that will help you remove the malware from your system, if other removal methods fail. 

Kaspersky Labs malware and virus protection products offer the most well-rounded and full set of features that you need, without the drawbacks of other anti-virus protection programs. As far as we've seen, they also offer the most comprehensive line of security solutions which will make sure you get all of the features you need and a ton of extra features that you just want, either for enhanced security or security for the whole family across all of the devices you use.

P.S. - The Privacy Cleaner included in all Kaspersky Labs software is one of the most efficient, effective, and least buggy online tracking cleaners we've used and it's inclusion in the "Tools" area of the software is one of the nicest additions to their security suites, in our opinion.

Here are the direct score comparisons for each of the security suites we like the most using a Windows 8 environment (provided by www.av-test.org)

A-VTest.org_logoAVTest.org_Win8_resultsYou can also click the results above to see the performance comparisons for all versions of Windows if you are using a different version

Just below the comments you'll see a free ebook offer to help you stay protected and knowledgable about online security and about keeping your "digital valuables" safe, we highly recommend it, check it out!

Tags: Viruses, Hackers, Antivirus, Protection, Virus, internet security, kaspersky lab