Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus 2008-2009

[carnageX]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

There's several other free ones on there as well..so by your logic, why are those ones also not very high up? Nod32 is very high on that list as well, and its not free.

Even our security experts recommend AVG .

I'd say the people that voted for Norton/McAfee didn't test the others .

 

[jgray152]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

AVG is a good program. The setup is pretty good and the scan quality is good and is probubly the better of the free AV software. This is why its being voted higher than other Free AV software. Due to the fact that its free, is a quick reason why people will use it and vote for it.

My main argument is the fact that this is based on personal preference and not testing.

 

[Baez]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

With the sheer amount of viruses being made every day it's next to impossible to test for true security. You're right jgray it mostly is about personal preference.

 

[jgray152]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

With the sheer amount of viruses being made every day it's next to impossible to test for true security.

I disagree. Some AV software is poor at catching viruses that are not in their definition files. While others can detect malicious activity and stop a virus from going to far.

There are different types of scans that AV software can provide. Just because there is a new virus which is not included in any definition files, doesn't mean it can't detect malicious activity or code from a specific file, block it, delete it or put it in quarantine.

If an AV software fails at catching new unknown viruses, then its at the bottom of the list for quality.

 

[hikaricloud]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

This thread is not going to be very good for "compairing" the AV software. Im sure 90% of voters have not "tested" all these AV products therfor can not give a good vote.

I see many go for AVG instead of others. This is mainly due to the fact that....its free. Doesn't mean it detects better than all others.

At our computer shop, we've tested just about everything we could get our hands on. Which is why I said I liked AVG and NOD32. They just work the best. You can't assume everyone is ignorant and has never tried anything but one AV.

 

[carnageX]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

If an AV software fails at catching new unknown viruses, then its at the bottom of the list for quality.

Can't say that I agree with that statement. New and unknown to me means it isn't like an existing virus that the scanner could possibly catch; it would work in a different way than the others would, so how would an AV be able to catch it if its not in its definitions list?

 

[jgray152]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

Heuristic Analysis - This is a main feature of many AV software programs to detect new or unknown viruses. It will not detect them all and will produce false positives but how the company designs this scan engine will produce the results we would like to see. You can set the level of this on some programs and some programs don't even offer it.

Now obveously there has to be a base of actions this scan has to detect. These base actions come from previous experience from past malicious programs. Not saying its using a definition file, but its finding any malicious programs that fit in some way or another to its programed base actions.

 

[macdawg]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

Heuristics Analysis is necessary in an AV, but not at the expense of tons of false positives.

Some AVG updates over the past couple of years changed its heuristics and caused false positives for tons of people.

Good thing about AVG is a user base of about 25 million to report problems or undetected viruses, so along with a smart heuristics it has a strong signature list (most important part to me), isn't resource hog, user friendly, can actually configure it to run on demand if you like, etc.

Can't say that about many free AV's.

 

[hikaricloud]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

The only downside to an AV getting popular is the hackers start coding viruses to specifically get around their scans. One of the many MANY reasons Norton sucks, but not it's worst problem.

 

[Zaraphrax]

Re: Tech-Forums Top Rated Antivirus

I used to use AVG, but I hated version 8 (and still do). So I moved to Avast. It's not too bad. But lately, I've been trying out NOD32 and I really, really like it. So, I'm sticking with it and putting it on all the machines in the house.

My Server 2003 box runs Symantec Corporate. It does the job.

So, my preferences...

1) NOD32
2) Avast
3) Symantec Corporate (even though it's not listed).