Antivirus Software
Find The Best Antivirus Software to Keep Your PC and Data Safe
Eek! A virus!
In this section:
Check out our reviews of 5 best antivirus Software products
- Norton Antivirus 2012
- Kaspersky Antivirus 2012
- Webroot SecureAnywhere 2012
- BitDefender Antivirus 2012
- McAfee Antivirus 2012
Search for them at Amazon Now:
Or visit this page to learn how to remove a virus infection manually with freely available tools made by these same companies — but remember to avoid re-infection you need the real-time protection that antivirus protection offers.
About Malware threats
A virus is designed to find it’s way deep into a computer system — usually a Microsoft Windows system. They often attach themselves to a specific program, certain Windows system files are especially vulnerable, these are called host programs.
Every time the host program runs, so does the virus; it then copies and propagates itself or performs other actions. These actions maybe damaging to the host PC itself or enslave it as part of a botnet or spam relay network.
Without any antivirus or internet security software you are leaving yourself wide open to exploitation and you may be unaware that anything is amiss. But more likely you will notice performance drop, frequent program or system crashes and pop ups for sex sites or insisting that your system is infected with malware and that you need to download this antivirus software (which will definitely not work).
How to work with Your Antivirus Software
Anti virus software works in real time to automatically constantly monitor system activity to find and remove anything suspicious. Leaving you to get on with everything else for the most part, but there are two more ways you can work with your antivirus software to keep your PC system clean.
First, keep MS Windows updated. This should happen automatically, but if you do get manlware on there automatic updates may get disabled. Microsoft know their own systems very well and work hard to close loopholes and possible exploits as they become apparent. Security patches are released on a schedule every month, and occasionally, as soon as they are ready if something critical comes up.
Also browsers are frequently targeted by malware. Fortunately Firefox and Chrome are both updated automatically with patches. Internet Explorer is update along with MS Windows.
All the PC user needs to do is keep an eye out to make sure this continues to happen. If it doesn’t, something is a miss.
The second thing is to use common sense. Some IT security professionals claim that these alone will keep your PC virus free — but they live and breath IT security in a way the layperson wouldn’t ever want to! But as a rule of thumb:
- Never give your credit card details in response to an email, it will be a phishing scam.
- Never log into your online bank by clicking a link in an email — another phishing scam.
- Never believe anything a Nigerian prince tells you by email.
- If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
These types of emails are usually detected by web mail providers like Googlemail and Hotmail, etc, so it will be rare that you see one outside of your spam folder. If you do, delete it without further ado. Avoidance is your first line of defence.
How The Best Antivirus Software Works to Keep Your PC Secure
The best antivirus software detects and prevents computer viruses, worms, trojans , and also adware, spyware, and other forms of malware from entering or operating your computer system — more detailed information is available here on all types of malware. Anti-virus software prevents and removes such threats by various means such as signature based detection, heuristics, and file emulation. These techniques are difficult to describe quickly, but in general terms:
- Signature detection works like a dictionary – if the virus is known, it’ll be in the dictionary and can be dealt with by the antivirus program. The signature refers to the activity the code actually causes, which can be detected and analyzed.
- Heuristics is more sophisticated and can help detect new variants of an older virus. It tests the signature of a suspicious code by comparing the signature to a known virus to see how close the match is. That is, it identifies a virus by what it does rather than what it looks like.
- File emulation is a step up from heuristics and uses a virtual environment within the antivirus software to test the suspicious program in isolation from Windows. It can then detect what it does and deal with it if need be.
- Root kit detection – a root kit can get control of your operating system and subvert your antivirus software, making removal near impossible without specialist tools. These are nasty and no antivirus software can claim 100% effectiveness against this type of threat. A system rebuild might be necessary – in which case you will be glad you made regular data backups or images!
New viruses and variants appear constantly and computer antivirus software companies battle to keep pace with hackers and beat their rivals to try and produce the best antivirus software in the sector.
In order to do this software labs need to be constantly monitoring for new variants observing how they operate and propagate themselves and their evil doings. Whichever of the best antivirus software you buy in the end, the company who made will constantly (almost daily) be updating it through upgrades and patches as new definitions are produced.
Anti-virus software works in real-time, monitoring, blocking and removing malware threats as and when they arise. Some are better than others, but any of the top 5 will keep you safe.
Which is The Best Antivirus Software? Which Do I Buy?
I have tried all of these products over the last year on my work laptop. I’m a self employed PC technician and I spend a lot of time dealing with virus infestations.
Take all anti virus reviews with a pinch of salt, whether positive or negative. The most extreme reviews may be from people who never really had to test their anti-virus software or from haters who usually had a bad customer service experience or strongly object to paying extra for technical support.
It pays to learn how to use every component of even the best antivirus software properly, whichever you get. Uninstall the old software correctly, install the new correctly, schedule an automatic scan everyday, and learn to use any rescue disks if the worst happens.
Malware and virus infections can be a major problem that will cause you a real headache. If you have up to date antivirus software running, you can consider yourself unlucky if you get an infection on your system — on the other hand ignoring the threat and making no effort to protect your personal data is just negligent.
Often PC owners let their antivirus subscriptions expire and a few months later wonder why they get pop ups, instability in MS Windows and other weirdness after using whatever illegal file sharing system is current.
Almost any current antivirus software is better than none. A product may be award winning according to independent testers, like AV Comparables, but will still get a good share of poor reviews from buyers. They all do.
Check out the 2012 antivirus products from the top 5 PC security software companies.
Search Amazon for reviews of the best antivirus software reviews from real buyers:
- Norton Antivirus 2012
- Kaspersky Antivirus 2012
- Webroot SecureAnywhere 2012
- BitDefender Antivirus 2012
- McAfee Antivirus 2012
Compare The Best Antivirus Software Releases With This Series of Walk-through Articles
- The 5 Best Antivirus Software Products 2012 Part 1
- The 5 Best Antivirus Software Products 2012 Part 2
- The 5 Best Antivirus Software Products 2012 Part 3
- The 5 Best Antivirus Software Products 2012 Part 4
- The 5 Best Antivirus Software Products 2012 Part 5
- Here is a neat video from one of the best antivirus software companies around, MicroTrend which clearly explains some of these concepts
- Return from Best Antivirus Software to PC Repair Software Shop
