Behind every piece of malware—be it a virus, spyware, or any other form of hostile, destructive code—is a sneaky, scheming scoundrel, oftentimes someone you’d never suspect. Antivirus suites promise to defend your PC against all the baddies. We test 10 of the leading products to see which ones are best at keeping your PC safe. You don’t need a military background to recognize that the Internet has turned intoa war zone. Not only are you always under attack, but the bad guys possess a seemingly endless arsenal of weapons that are constantly changing. Set foot in the wrong website and you might be stepping into a booby trap of malicious Javascript code. Toolbars and greeting cards come laced with spyware, hackers are finding new exploits faster than software vendors can patch the old ones, and rootkits have given virtual villains a way to stealthily penetrate deep into your system at the kernel level.
And if all that weren’t enough, social networking continues to sweep the web, making it even easier for morally bereft miscreants to spread their foul files. Can you really trust that MySpace page you’re viewing not to contain some hidden element ready to do you harm? You even need to be suspicious of IMs, and that includes messages seemingly originating from contacts on your buddy list. It’s enough to make you want to wave the white flag—and if you plan on going into battle alone, you probably should.
But you don’t have to fight the fight all on your lonesome. Several security vendors offer software packages that not only promise protection against viruses, but also purport to run off rootkits, stop spam dead in its tracks, and even circumvent websites from loading hidden malware before it has a chance to run amok on your PC. This got us wondering, just how much protection is actually necessary?
To answer that question, we hit up all the major security vendors and asked them to send us their most robust packages. We also gathered the most popular free antivirus programs for comparison. After all, power users know how to practice safe computing habits, which can go a long way toward PC safety. We’ll cut through the hype to tell you if the protection you get with a paid app is any better than what you can get for free—or if the paid programs, which have become so huge as of late, are too unwieldy and ultimately more troublesome than the viruses they’re meant to combat
- Our Testing Methodology:
It doesn’t matter how effective an AV app is at catching viruses if it means we have to suffer through constant nagging or performance degradation in our day-to-day computing. We’ve identified the five criteria by which security apps should be judged.
- System Performance and Scan Speed
We know you spent time researching components and toiling over your system build, so why let a poorly optimized program transform your hot rod into a horse and buggy? To gauge each AV package’s performance impact, we loaded up a series of action scripts in OSMark (http://tinyurl.com/OSMark), paying close attention to both memory and CPU activity. We then compared the results to that of a clean install.
We’re also interested in how long it takes to complete a full system scan. In today’s dual- and quad-core landscape, you no longer have to sit idly by waiting for a scheduled scan to finish, but if you suspect your system has become ill, you won’t want to do much of anything until your virus scanner produces a clean bill of health. With stopwatch in hand, we measured the time it took each program to run through its routine.
- Annoyance:
Whether we’re using our PC for work or play, we don’t want to be bothered with near-constant nagging from our security software. An AV app should integrate seamlessly with the OS and be able to do its job with minimal interaction from the end user, while still offering at least some level of customization. Otherwise, it’s no less obtrusive than the viruses it’s supposed to be protecting against.
In order to assess how much each app intrudes on our day-to-day life, we performed a variety of common tasks to see how the AV software responds, if at all. This includes web surfing, downloading files, running executables, playing games, and everything else you’re likely to do with your PC.
We also took into account how much harassment we can expect to receive when the subscription runs out.- Features and Implementation:
Anyone who’s ever shopped for a new car knows what it’s like to be pressured into paying extra for all kinds of upgrades. And just because the salesman is attempting to increase his profit margin doesn’t mean you can’t both benefit from tacking on useful additions, but that only works if you’ll actually use the added amenities. Do you really need six cup holders in a two-seat sports car?
Likewise, there’s no point in owning a security suite stuffed with apps if most of them suck. Not only that, but you need to consider whether this added functionality is easy to use and how much pestering you can expect from disabling unused features. We take all this into consideration.
- How To Avoid Viruses
Captain Obvious says that the best way to prevent infection is to avoid viruses in the first place, but what he doesn’t tell you is how to do it. And even though hackers continue to get more cunning in both delivery and execution, you can tip the odds considerably in your favor by practicing safe and sane computing.
If you receive an unknown or unexpected attachment, don’t open it no matter who it came from. Not only are some viruses capable of emailing themselves to everyone they find in an infected user’s address book, but inexperienced computer users are just as guilty of passing along payloads as hackers are of distributing them.
BitTorrent sites and peer-to-peer networking clients are also common modes of spreading infection. When attempting to download a legitimate program—a Linux distro, for instance —use the link provided at the vendor’s website. Pirated software is a particularly popular source of malware, so if your moral compass doesn’t steer you toward the straight and narrow, the risk of infection should.
And finally, get in the habit of regularly checking for software updates. New exploits are always being discovered in Windows, QuickTime, web browsers, and other common programs
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