It’s a sad fact that if you zoom around the Internet unprotected you’re headed for a world of hurt. A drive-by download could turn your PC into a spam-spewing zombie, a keylogger could steal your bank account passwords, or a spy program could set you up for identity theft. These fates and worse await the unprotected Web surfer.
Never fear; there are tons of products out there to keep you safe. We’ll break down their different types and give you recommendations for the best and the cheapest protection.
Security Suite
By installing a full-scale security suite you take care of all your protection at once. With a suite in place you won’t need most of the other categories. A suite will include antivirus, firewall protection, and antispam at a minimum. The best suites add features like privacy protection, parental control, and password management.
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Norton Internet Security 2011 remains our Editors’ Choice in this category. Not only does it cover all the bases, it does a good job across the board. And Symantec’s engineers keep working to make it even better. The Norton Internet Security 2012 beta is out, and they’re already working on the 2013 edition.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 is another very good choice. Like Norton, it uses built-in intelligence to avoid baffling users with confusing firewall queries. Norton and Kaspersky also handle Web-based exploits better than most.
Free security suites exist, but there aren’t any I would recommend. If you’re going to pin all your hopes for security protection on a single product, you really need to scrape up the cost of a good suite.
Security Mega-Suite
Microsoft’s now-defunct OneCare launched the category of mega-suite by adding backup and tuneup to the regular mix of suite features. In a very real way, backup is the ultimate security. It lets you recover data even if the computer itself is destroyed. System tuneup is a bonus that may make your system run faster and could conceivably fix configuration errors or Registry problems.
Norton 360 Version 5.0, Editors’ Choice for mega-suite, includes all the same features as Norton Internet Security in a package that’s aimed at the user who doesn’t want to spend time thinking about security. It comes with 2 GB of hosted online backup; paying $20 more for the premium edition raises that to 25 GB. In addition it can back up data to almost any local media.
Besides to the expected file and Registry cleanup, Norton 360′s PC Tuneup can manage startup items. It report on resource usage by programs launched at startup, reversibly disable them on demand, and even set some of them to start after a delay. It also tracks resource usage by other programs and warns when a program goes overboard.
Kaspersky’s mega-suite, Kaspersky PURE Total Security, only offers local backup, but it’s bursting with other features that make it a proper mega-suite. It cleans up unnecessary and erroneous files and Registry items, wipes out browsing traces, tunes browser settings, and scans for unpatched vulnerabilities. It offers secure deletion and encrypted storage to protect sensitive files. You’ll get a ton of protection in this package.
Two other mega-suites deserve mention specifically for their backup systems. Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011and Webroot Internet Security Complete 2011 go way beyond simple online backup. You can sync files between computers, share backed-up files with friends, access files on your mobile device, and more. However, their main suite components don’t quite come up to the level of Norton and Kaspersky.
Here again, there’s no free security mega-suite that I would recommend. You didn’t really expect one, did you?
Standalone Antivirus
If you don’t install any other security software, you really, really need an antivirus program. These days that means a program that protects against all kinds of malicious software, not just viruses. To rate antivirus programs I put them through my own malware removal and malware blocking tests. I also consider the results the product achieved in various independent lab tests.
Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security 9.0 did very well in my tests, but it doesn’t have any track record with the independent labs. Webroot AntiVirus with Spy Sweeper 2011 has a marvelously simple interface, scored almost as well as Ad-Aware in my tests, and gets generally good ratings from the labs. At present these two share the honor of Editors’ Choice for standalone antivirus.
Norton AntiVirus 2011 is another good choice. The independent labs love it, giving it top marks across the board. It got the best overall score in my malware blocking test, though Webroot and Ad-Aware did better at removing rootkits and scareware, and at keeping malware out of a clean system.
Antivirus is one area where you can get good protection for no cost. Quite a few of the free products score better than most commercial products. Ad-Aware FREE Internet Security 9.0, Editors’ Choice for free antivirus, scored almost as well as the Pro edition in my tests, and much better than the average commercial antivirus.
Like most free products, Ad-Aware FREE wasn’t submitted to the independent labs for testing. AVG AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 is one of the few that gets regular lab testing, and its scores are consistently stellar. It didn’t shine quite as brightly in my own hands-on tests, though.
