adminintentionally trying to avoid as this will obviously spill into mostly opinionated but less factual argument.
At times it feels like being part of the useless BMW vs Mercedes argument, of course we all know the products are good and our personal choices should never sound much superior. But here we are today, the readers have again poured questions and I will be treading on most uncomfortable ground.
The past two weeks I devoted my articles to computer viruses and the sinister malwares and not trying to instill fear but to come to reality with the real threats beyond our computer screens, hence the final part will tackle the remedy component to help secure our digital world.
Most readers just want a one word answer before dashing to that one-stop software shop for antivirus software, but I promise, you will get that answer if you read through the whole article.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with just buying the best and save yourself from the comparison but the information to ascertain the winning product is much more important than just knowing the final winner.
Unlike the motoring argument, antivirus software are not all the same, some are more equal than others but the trick is for how long. I know motoring columnists and counterparts will beg to differ and demand to enlighten this writer, but please let’s not lose focus here.
Chances are very high today that if your computer is not protected, it’s not only vulnerable but also most likely already infected. The Internet is one place never to visit without a secure antivirus package and it only takes great ignorance to even take the risk. This has been common sense and hoping it prevails, what then is the best secure package.
The best antivirus software can only be measured by how much it can offer not its traditional reputation for some long gone years. It has been widely known around the pundit’s circles that our traditional giants have slept way off the top five yet the more robust software makers have been comfortably swaying around the top list for the past few years.
Most users are unfortunately duped into believing reviews from Google and search engines` top antivirus.
It is unfortunate that most of these results are biased and are usually sponsored by the overwhelming winner after a shoddy technical “analysis” that is why you will never have a single package being awarded the ultimate winner across all reviews.
Computer viruses that used to be innocuous annoying pranks have developed into pernicious threats that can steal your private data or wipe off your entire hard drive. Today it is much cheaper to protect your system than trying to rescue a virus ravaged system.
The most important feature to judge an antivirus package with is its effectiveness. No matter how dull the colours and the little bells and whistles it has, it is much better if it just keeps your system secured.
How it detects a threat and its counter measure tactics makes it the numero uno. What good is a fancily designed package with all the bells and whistles yet it still leaves you vulnerable to common attacks, just hit the uninstall button!
The human nature has always found it difficult to move from traditional practices, be it cultural or spiritual and it seems that technologically it is not any easier. It really takes guts to move from old ways of doing things hence even after enlightenment, some people would still not budge, humanity!
A smart package offers proactive protection with heuristic detection methods that are able to detect a threat before it attacks your system. On this basis a good package is branded, as this is the core business of antivirus package.
An antivirus package is as good as its last update file and if you are not updating your package no matter how good it may be you are rendering it useless.
Good antivirus servers push their update files to their clients as soon as they are available and this should be automatically done without any human intervention.
Antivirus updates contain virus signatures of recently known and reported viruses to counteract the attack.
The update file will then be used as a verification database to match against any file for scrutiny. This will obviously mean that if you are not updated then you will not be able to detect any new threat when it comes and if you are online, chances are you have already been infected.
Real time detection is the ability to protect a system instantly as the attack is occurring. While it is highly recommended to
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The best antivirus package
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periodically completely scan your system for malwares, this
would also be a litmus test for your package.
If you discover infections after a scan it simply means your package is weak in real time detection prowess and worse things could be happening. That can also be caused by scanning after an update to detect infiltration that took place when you were not updated.
File reputation and analysis is the sleuthing edge your package has to detect potentially unwanted files. Although some of these files may be benign, it will save your day to discover that they are being automatically screened. This, however, can work against you when your package begins to detect your good data as virus or your potentially dangerous files as baneful. Smarter platforms should give the option to delete, clean or ignore, if you are a computing novice never compromise, go straight for delete or clean.
False positives are when your package obnoxiously detects good files as infected raising unnecessary alarm and panic. When a package is known to give false positives it is rendered unstable, false negatives are much costly as your package will detect that your system is clean when it’s infected hence to be blunt, the package is useless. None of these should be associated with any commercial antivirus package; free anti virus packages do play these games.
A stable package should offer proactive, 360 degree defence line to protect against all known and unknown vulnerabilities with minimum user intervention. But the top cream has an edge on how they detect other malware like spywares, rootkits and phishing scams, keyloggers and yet to date some of these big names have not a clue what so ever to cover this gap.
Malware attacks have become much smarter and subtle, they have developed new ways to go round the traditional defence line persistently.
Ultimate protection without chewing system resources or unnecessary interruptions hogged down with disruptive security warnings are some of the features used to select the best programme. Some packages are well known for slowing down your machine as soon as you install them, these turn to be a burden when you start to scan as they will gobble your memory and processor speed.
Before an anti virus is graded the top flight or certified, best it goes under industrial lab tests and these are the factors to be considered. Virus detection, virus cleaning, internet security, scanning speed, stealth, links scanning, updates, blocking bad websites, blocking phishing attempts, technical support, user friendliness, manageability, game mode, boot up speed, resource management, virtual cloud briefcase among the above mentioned.
The package that passes this test periodically takes the price for that period. Some packages have constantly been picked the best after these ratings and if you can’t wait anymore, here is my grand finale list as at December 2011, from the leading best.
Bit defender 2012, Kaspersky 2012, McAfee 2012, Eset Nod32 2012, Viper 2012, Norton 2012, Panda 2012, f secure, Panda 2012 and Avast 2012
Packages are full commercial version, these will give you totally different results when working with the free version modes as some features will be locked or limited hence you will need to be technically acquainted on the freewares.
l The writer is a computing specialist and can be reached at [email protected],
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