Computers have impacted nearly every aspect of our lives in every aspect, from helping students learn as well as monitoring patients in hospitals, to regulating critical manufacturing processes. Cyberthreats like ransomware, malware, and viruses have also increased because of the increased dependence on computers. Antivirus software is designed to identify these threats and stop them from damaging your PC or stealing personal information.
When choosing an antivirus program, it is important to think about its virus-scanning capabilities, if it has a fire-wall, and how it performs in independent lab tests. You may also want to look at its customer support, the frequency it updates and the amount of devices it can safeguard. Certain programs, like Norton offer additional tools that can help prevent identity theft and protect your privacy online.
The best programs offer a variety of protection options such as heuristic detection which identifies behavior patterns typical of viruses or malware, and signature matching, which compares files against a list of known malware. Some programs also use sandboxing to block the suspicious files and puts them in a safe virtual environment where they can’t do any harm.
A lot of the top antivirus programs are available for free, although they may not have as many extra features as paid-for alternatives. Bitdefender’s premium edition comes with parental controls, a file shredder, and password manager, however its free version scored try here well and also comes with a firewall. Similar to that, Malwarebytes’ free version was praised by AV-Test for its top score for 2023 but fell short in our test of usability. Intego Mac Internet Security X9 offers a strong combination of tools (VirusBarrier and NetBarrier) which killed and caught the most malware-related threats in our test.