What Are the Best Virus Scanners Available?

Many of the mainstream brands that have been around for years have evolved into bloated products that attempt to be the "be all & end all" of security for your computer. Unfortunately, in my experience as a desktop support admin, these consumer-level products not only bog the system down, but can actually prevent functionality due the extent in which they were locked down. With that being said, the typical consumer doesn't know anything outside of Norton & McAfee (either due to word of mouth, free from their ISPs, etc), which makes it even harder for them to discover anything else.

There are several factors that you will need to remember as you select a product. One is that no single product, regardless of advertising, is capable of stopping all the viruses & spyware found on the internet. Secondly, is that these products specialize in preventing you from getting infected, and may not be effective for removing infections already present on your computer. Therefore, it is imperative that you protect yourself from day one after purchasing a PC. Finally, Mac's are not necessarily free from viruses. The truth is there is a very small share of viruses written for that particular operating system (OS) simply due to the fact that the majority of users are on PCs. So, the likelihood of you getting infected is very low. Why, you ask? A hacker/programmer would rather get the majority of computers users versus a minority.

What do I look for in a product? As mentioned before, I am looking for performance as a factor. I want my system protected without running excessive background tasks and services. Secondly, I want a good balance between virus and spyware/malware protection (this is important, especially if you do not plan on using a supplemental product; a supplemental product would be considered a standalone spyware/malware scanner such as Ad-Aware or Spybot - Search and Destroy). Third, outside of consideration of annual fees, are additional features such as website filtering. For example, some companies now maintain blacklists of websites that have been known to cause viruses, and will display a warning page (and/or block it) when you attempt to access it. This feature is very valuable because not all viruses come from e-mails. In fact, many come from ads and scripts with little or no interaction from the user.

Are paid products better than free products? Not necessarily, as many free products on the internet can perform similarly, if not, better than its paid competitors. In fact, I use a free product called Avast on my own personal PC's at home, which meets all of my needs listed above. Other free alternatives include a popular product called AVG.

If you decide to go the paid route (outside of the paid versions for the products listed above), I would recommend the following products. Kaspersky, NOD32, and Trend Micro (not necessarily in any particular order) have been proven to be very reliable products in my experience.

Source: A previous article that I have written and published on Helium.