How to Choose the Best Anti-Virus Program

For years, the battle has raged between anti-virus vendors and virus creators. While there has been no clear winner in the battle, the virus writers are maybe starting to nudge ahead. According to anti-virus vendor Panda, 23% of home computers and 72% of company networks are infected with malware – and that’s despite being protected with an anti-virus product. So, is all lost? Is your network doomed to collapse under an onslaught of malware? No, not all. By choosing the right anti-virus program, you can drastically cut the chance of viruses or other malware infecting your system. Here’s how to choose the best anti-virus program that will be suit your needs:-

1. Ease of management and configuration are important considerations – and especially for small businesses which will not have the same degree of in-house expertise/manpower as their enterprise-level cousins. Should a product be hard or time consuming to set up and manage, it is more likely that it will be improperly configured resulting in unintentionally introduced security holes. Products vary enormously in their management overhead and SMBs should choose a product that can be easily managed by the available staff.
2. Viruses are no longer the only threat. There are numerous forms of malware that can threaten the availability of a network and the integrity of the data that it holds. Consider a solution which offers integrated threat protection. By choosing a product that protects against viruses, spam, Web-borne threats and other risks, you’ll have less applications and vendor-relationships that need to be managed. Additionally, you’ll probably find that an integrated solution works out to be cheaper than a collection of point solutions.
3. Today’s threats are rapidly evolving. Automatically mutating polymorphic viruses and sophisticated packaging/obfuscation methods can result in threats evading detection by traditional signature-based solutions. Consequently, heuristic (behaviour-based) detection has become increasingly important. Most anti-virus solutions now have heuristic capabilities, but their accuracy can vary enormously. Check out Anti-Malware Test Lab and AV-comparatives to see how various products performed in retrospective/proactive tests.
4. Again, products vary enormously in their capabilities. Virus Bulletin’s VB100 Tests provide insight into how effective products really are against in-the-wild viruses.
5. Consider outsourcing. A SaaS (software as a service) or managed service solution may be the most effective and economical option for SMBs.
6. It’s not all about purchase cost. Initial acquisition costs account for only a relatively small portion of a product’s total cost of ownership (TCO). Consider the cost of license renewals, support costs and extending licensing to cover new extra workstations should you business grow. These costs can all vary substantially between vendors.
7. Whatever solution you choose, be sure to keep it updated. Like most security solutions, an anti-virus product that’s not updated regularly and frequently will be drastically less effective.

Once final piece of advice: Symantec and McAfee are not the only players in town! Vendors such as BitDefender, ESET and Kaspersky may well not be as well known as these corporate giants, but they nonetheless offer excellent products aimed specifically at SMBs that are well worth considering. So shop around!