Which Anti-Virus / spyware etc software is best?

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matt_wright

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Matt Wright
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Hi guys, i am getting a new PC and i would like the Best software to protect the PC fully, anti-virus / spyware, firewlal etc etc

I am looking at Kaspersky 2011 internet security (can get it for £11)

Just wondering if you have any ideas about the best software avaliable that covers everything?

Thanks
Matt
 
The new Microsoft one is getting some good reviews (better than AVG and Avast) and it's free!
 
kapersky, never had a problem i couldn't get out of with that and as of yet i have never had a pc in for repair with virus/spyware that had kapersky,

AVG, seem shed loads through the doors full of virus/spyware, avast and nod32 are not that much better, and anyone who uses nortons or mcafee gets an offer of a format or i wont even look at it.
 
I personally can't reccommend Kaspersky. Not so long ago, our business committed to rolling it out at a lot of our customers. Quite simply, anybody who's machine we installed it on ground to a halt - and I'm talking quad core, 4GB of RAM beasts here. I don't know what on earth was the issue (and nor did Kaspersky) but that software KILLED machines, although the non-business versions did seem a bit better.
 
matt_wright said:
Hi guys, i am getting a new PC and i would like the Best software to protect the PC fully, anti-virus / spyware, firewlal etc etc
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Will the PC be sat behind a router? If so, and assuming Win 7, I'd go with (and do!) Windows Firewall and Avast. I'd also only install the modules you need to minimise load. I only run filesystem shield (analyses files as they are loaded into memory), web shield (analyses web pages for threats) and network shield (belt and braces incase of worms - but windows firewall should be fine for this).

The real problem with anti-virus software is that they are only as good as the databases they use. You may find looking at the files available at http://www.av-comparatives.org/ a useful thing to do (all the above mentioned come out quite well with Avast & Avira probably being the pick of the bunch at the moment).

Also, the £11 will give you 1 year of files. They will then charge you again the following year for the next years support so there is an ongoing charge with paid for security.
 
Whether it's sitting behind a router or not, I'd still install anti-virus and anti-malware software. Only the anti-virus software will use system resources constantly and if you choose wisely, you can minimise that.

If you want a commercial package for anti-virus then avoid Symantec/Norton and McAfee like the plague - they're both bloatware. Gramps mentioned NOD32 and Kapersky - both of those are excellent.

However, personally I'd go with a free package and would recommend either Avira Antivir (this is the one I use myself), Avast, or Microsoft Security Essentials. I'd avoid AVG as it's become somewhat bloated of late and isn't as efficient at detecting problems as it used to be.

For anti-malware, I'd go with either Malwarebytes or Superantispyware. Bothe are excellent but do remember that they need to be run manually and updated before you run them.
 
Islander said:
Whether it's sitting behind a router or not, I'd still install anti-virus and anti-malware software. Only the anti-virus software will use system resources constantly and if you choose wisely, you can minimise that.

If you want a commercial package for anti-virus then avoid Symantec/Norton and McAfee like the plague - they're both bloatware. Gramps mentioned NOD32 and Kapersky - both of those are excellent.

However, personally I'd go with a free package and would recommend either Avira Antivir (this is the one I use myself), Avast, or Microsoft Security Essentials. I'd avoid AVG as it's become somewhat bloated of late and isn't as efficient at detecting problems as it used to be.

For anti-malware, I'd go with either Malwarebytes or Superantispyware. Bothe are excellent but do remember that they need to be run manually and updated before you run them.
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+1 on the recommendations. AVG also seems to have a very high rate of "false positives". Sad really as it used to be a decent program.
 
Microsoft security essentials will protect against viruses, spyware & malware.
I have used Nortons, McAfee, Avast, Avira, Malwarebytes, AVG etc. but I just use MSE now.
 
Suvv said:
Microsoft security essentials will protect against viruses, spyware & malware.
I have used Nortons, McAfee, Avast, Avira, Malwarebytes, AVG etc. but I just use MSE now.
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+1

Haven't had a problem since I started using MS Essentials.
 
Islander said:
Whether it's sitting behind a router or not, I'd still install anti-virus and anti-malware software.
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The point was that behind a router, you can be less choosy about the firewall as the router acts as your firewall to the internet (although I think the windows firewall in 7 is pretty good).
 
arad85 said:
The point was that behind a router, you can be less choosy about the firewall as the router acts as your firewall to the internet (although I think the windows firewall in 7 is pretty good).
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No quibbles with the Win 7 firewall (or Vista - they're the same). For XP I'd still install a decent personal firewall though - the MS one is rubbish. ;)
 
Islander said:
No quibbles with the Win 7 firewall (or Vista - they're the same). For XP I'd still install a decent personal firewall though - the MS one is rubbish. ;)
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Why do you say that?
 
It's all personal choice and the best one varies from year to year anyway. Some might say McAffee is bloatware, but it's packed full of features and in a corporate environment is our preferred choice for management and protection.

Malwarebytes is great for malware, MSE is looking pretty good also. Avast generally has a good name, although I've recently seen that the latest version of lapersky and Avast have started blocking newsgroup readers and downloading.
 
Byker28i said:
It's all personal choice and the best one varies from year to year anyway. Some might say McAffee is bloatware, but it's packed full of features and in a corporate environment is our preferred choice for management and protection.

Malwarebytes is great for malware, MSE is looking pretty good also. Avast generally has a good name, although I've recently seen that the latest version of lapersky and Avast have started blocking newsgroup readers and downloading.
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We have McAfee as well. It replaced Symantec and at first it was so much better but then the bloat crept in and now it's almost as bad as Symantec was. Hopefully they'll get their act sorted out though because their e-Policy Orchestrator really is the mutt's nuts.
 
Islander said:
Because the firewall that MS packages with XP only filters inbound packets - that's rubbish.
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I wouldn't call it "rubbish" purely because of that. Insufficient maybe, but that is debatable. Personally, I'd say that monitoring for unsolicited incoming connections is very important and certainly better than nothing. I don't want my computer to answer to any incoming connection (with the exception of RDP on port 3389) unless I initiated the connection first - and my understanding is that XP's firewall does that nicely. If the computer is clean in the first place and set up properly, then there should be no rogue programs on the inside trying to dial out anyway, so the fact that the firewall doesn't provide that functionality becomes an almost null point, imo. You can audit what goes on inside, but you can't stop people from outside trying to get in... and that's where XP's firewall does it's job, nicely!

Perhaps my opinions are skewed but hey, that's the way I see it. I love software that is small, simple and is great at what it does. Sure, it'd be nice if XP's firewall was more like the one in later versions of Windows, but honestly, I'm not losing any sleep over the fact that it isn't...
 
Islander said:
Because the firewall that MS packages with XP only filters inbound packets - that's rubbish.
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I think you'll find with SP3, that has changed ;)
 
Islander said:
Sorry, but no it didn't - outbound filtering was only implemented with the introduction of Vista :p
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Oooh.. I think you're right. Don't know where I picked that bit of knowledge up but....
 
trencheel303 said:
I wouldn't call it "rubbish" purely because of that. Insufficient maybe, but that is debatable. Personally, I'd say that monitoring for unsolicited incoming connections is very important and certainly better than nothing. I don't want my computer to answer to any incoming connection (with the exception of RDP on port 3389) unless I initiated the connection first - and my understanding is that XP's firewall does that nicely. If the computer is clean in the first place and set up properly, then there should be no rogue programs on the inside trying to dial out anyway, so the fact that the firewall doesn't provide that functionality becomes an almost null point, imo. You can audit what goes on inside, but you can't stop people from outside trying to get in... and that's where XP's firewall does it's job, nicely!

Perhaps my opinions are skewed but hey, that's the way I see it. I love software that is small, simple and is great at what it does. Sure, it'd be nice if XP's firewall was more like the one in later versions of Windows, but honestly, I'm not losing any sleep over the fact that it isn't...
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That's a big 'if' :p

Any decent software firewall should, at a minimum, provide both inbound and outbound packet filtering.

Hence the popularity of third party firewalls for XP and their use being recommended by security professionals. It may suit you and if so, that's fine - you understand the risks and know how to mitigate them. I'd never recommend it as a solution though - for the majority of users it just isn't adequate. :shrug:
 
Islander said:
for the majority of users it just isn't adequate. :shrug:
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Word.

Unfortunately it was only when Windows Vista came along that Microsoft began to realise that the vast majority of its users are mere mortals, and it was the first OS which I think had a half decent out of the box security configuration. (The interface sucked, but I won't go there) All of MS's older NT based Operating Systems have the potential to be hardened, but that's no good when they come like a swiss cheese out of the box, because most users won't even attempt to, or be interested in, securing the OS. Having said that, I really can't blame them (microsoft) when you look at how well UAC went down (not!). A really great advance in security (particularly with the fact that it virtualises writes to protected areas - absolutely ingenious) that pretty much everyone hates :shrug:
 
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trencheel303 said:
Word.

Unfortunately it was only when Windows Vista came along that Microsoft began to realise that the vast majority of its users are mere mortals, and it was the first OS which I think had a half decent out of the box security configuration. (The interface sucked, but I won't go there) All of MS's older NT based Operating Systems have the potential to be hardened, but that's no good when they come like a swiss cheese out of the box, because most users won't even attempt to, or be interested in, securing the OS. Having said that, I really can't blame them (microsoft) when you look at how well UAC went down (not!). A really great advance in security (particularly with the fact that it virtualises writes to protected areas - absolutely ingenious) that pretty much everyone hates :shrug:
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NT used to annoy the hell out of me. The out of the box default installation left NTFS and share permissions set so that a basic user had full FS access. You had to lock it all down very carefully and it was very easy to miss things. Microsoft's attitude at the time was that everything should be open to enable ease of use - they had no concept of security whatsoever.

I cut my teeth on Netware and UNIX which were the opposite - everything was denied out of the box and the administrator had to set permissions for access before it was usable.

Microsoft thought it could tell everyone how to behave and it took them a long time and a lot of mistakes to realise that they couldn't. Remember the Microsoft Network? :razz: :lol:
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies.

For those that were wondering the system i will be running is Windows 7 - 64bit.
So many replies i will have to take my time and read through them again (to take in everyone's views)! But it does seem that no one has a bad word to say about Kaspersky. And maybe the new microsoft one s worth looking at.

Does the microsoft one cover everything you need antivirus / spyware etc?
 
matt_wright said:
But it does seem that no one has a bad word to say about Kaspersky.
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Ahem.

trencheel303 said:
I personally can't reccommend Kaspersky. Not so long ago, our business committed to rolling it out at a lot of our customers. Quite simply, anybody who's machine we installed it on ground to a halt - and I'm talking quad core, 4GB of RAM beasts here. I don't know what on earth was the issue (and nor did Kaspersky) but that software KILLED machines, although the non-business versions did seem a bit better.
Click to expand...
 
matt_wright said:
But it does seem that no one has a bad word to say about Kaspersky.
Click to expand...
Have a read of some of the stuff on the website I pointed you at. Kaspersky is outclassed by some of the others (generally beginning with A...)
 
If you're on Win 7, then the built in firewall along with MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) should be a good setup. It's what I use now and for the past 12 years I've moved from McAfee to Nortons to Avria to AVG and panda. When I trialled MSE it detected some items McAfee and Avira missed out on.
I also bought Kaspersky a couple of months before my McAfee was due to expire but tried MSE instead so I never got round to using it. Heard Kaspersky (and Nod32) are great.

Seriously, MSE and Win7's inbuilt firewall work in the background and you'll hardly notice it working away. Just make sure you update it regularly.

It is also a small app and does not hog resources.


Also mentioned above, I use Malwarebytes and tun it once a month for a deep scan along with MSE.
 
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