A. Antivirus Software

Antivirus Software

Choosing antivirus software is much like choosing a vehicle. Some people want the Lexus, others want the Porsche, others are fine with a Kia, and there are ones for everyone in between.

Symantec/Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan are the two leaders in the home and small business marketplace. They are fairly simple to install, use, and update. They have a dizzying array of related products designed to offer you more protection while sucking more money out of your pockets based on fear. Which is better? Whichever one you like the best and feel the most comfortable with. Each year the trade magazines review many products, and both Symantec and McAfee (along with others mentioned here, too) have shared the top seat. We generally recommend Symantec for several of our clients because it’s pretty easy to use and seems to have protected our clients a bit better than those using McAfee.

Corporate clients with client-server networks will probably find solutions from Trend Micro, the E-Trust Antivirus product line from Computer Associates (CA) ,or the Small Business product line from Symantec/Norton to be a much better fit and more manageable in the enterprise. Contact us for assistance with picking a good solution for your particular organization’s environment.

Aside from Symantec and McAfee, there are some other well known and well respected companies (in alphabetical order) with information and products that you might be interested in: BitDefender, Central Command, Computer Associates, F-Secure, Kaspersky Lab, Norman Antivirus, Panda Software, Trend Micro, Sophos, Vet Antivirus.

Alternatives

Why would someone consider using a product other than Symantec or McAfee? Why are there so many choices out there?

One common reason is akin to the reason some people avoid Microsoft’s e-mail programs. Since MS has the majority of the e-mail programs out there, it becomes the biggest target for virus writers to attack. Likewise, most viruses that attempt to shut down your antivirus software only go after 2 or 3 versions. You can guess which ones those are, can’t you? So if you pick a very good but much less well known antivirus solution, you might escape some attacks to which others will be vulnerable. And Symantec/Norton and McAfee don’t always get everything 100% right 100% of the time. At one time part of the Norton SystemWorks suite had a serious flaw in it that made all the computers running it very vulnerable. Fortunately, Symantec is also good about coming out with patches very quickly, and as long as people kept their software current, the problem was quickly fixed.

Additionally, different clients have different needs. Some clients need protection for dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of computers. Some need to protect file servers and e-mail servers. Many businesses choose Linux or the Mac OS, but the major PC antivirus players aren’t as strong in those markets (if they offer a solution at all).

For these reasons it is important to consider a variety of options, and don’t let price or brand name recognition be the only deciding factors in your search for the best product for your needs. Sometimes the best approach is to have different applications at different points in the network (one program on your desktop, a different one on the mail server, and a third one at the perimeter of the network).

One thing that usually does NOT work is having more than one virus scanner running on a single computer. They usually interfere with each other, and can cause your computer to malfunction and/or slow to an absolute crawl. Always completely uninstall your old antivirus software and reboot your computer before you install a new one. Several top antivirus programs include multiple scanning engines that provide the protection of multiple scanners, but do so in a way that does not cause problems.

More Information

Please also look at Appendix E, which offers examples of common subject lines, message bodies, file attachment names, and Trojan horse names for a few common viruses circulating the net. Learning to recognize suspicious e-mails can be very beneficial.

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