Virus Protection - Internet Security (Week 8)

Many computers are vulnerable to various types of harmful software such as viruses, Trojans, and worms. They are known collectively as malware.

Why is virus protection important?
Having virus protection on a system is important to help protect data.

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN A CURE.

As with most things, the best virus protection is prevention; an anti-malware program that will stop malware before it can get on your system. Possibly the most well known type of virus protection is an anti-virus software. However, it is also important to have an anti-spyware and a firewall installed and active on the system.

What do you look for?
When looking for virus protection, consider first an anti-virus program. The important options for an anti-virus program are:
- real time or on-access scanning
- the ability to schedule a scan on a regular basis
- automatic e-mail scanning.

Your anti virus should also:
- be easy to use and install
- be effective in both detecting and cleaning viruses
- provide easy to understand notices of found viruses and what the program has done with it
- have good customer support.

To add on to that, it should also be easy to update your software so that there is no unnecessary hassle when you try to keep your software up-to-date.

Who is at the top?

You're probably wondering right now what some of the leading anti-virus softwares are.

Here are just a few of the brands which consumers trust.

1. VIPRE Antivirus

Voters in the 2011 Readers' Choice Awards overwhelmingly selected VIPRE Antivirus as their choice for "best antivirus for Windows". 44% of all votes went to VIPRE Antivirus. In addition to a bevy of loyal users, VIPRE offers a low-impact, high performance scan engine free of the legacy code that can hinder some of the older antivirus scanners. VIPRE's malware detection has been repeatedly certified by all the major certification agencies and the company offers a no-hassle 30-day money back guarantee.

2. Norton Internet Security

Symantec's antivirus products have historically always provided excellent detection and removal of malware. On the downside, that protection came at the price of often crippling system performance. That's now a thing of the past. Performance overhauls were the hallmark of Norton Internet Security 2009, and enhancements continued in the 2010 product line.