For a long time I was ESET fan and sticked to their ESET Security Suite.
But, I wanted to explore some more and switched over to Bitdefender
Total Security. Few days ago I've had enough of it and decided it was
the right time to move on and explore further beyond.
There is just one fact you need to take into
consideration before you start looking out for anti-virus software -
110% user subjectivity on this particular topic. What I want to say with
this is that most of user reviews you can find about certain anti-virus
or security suites on the web are by my opinion doubtful and of very
questionable background. If not that well most users are happy with free
anti-virus software, some are happy because their anti-virus software
has nice animation running in system tray, few actually figured out how
their anti-virus software actually slowed down their system, some of
them got it bundled with some other product, etc. The fact is most of
users post their comments based on their preferences which can be or
aren't at all useful or relevant to other users. Very few users actually
post their comments based on real effectiveness of used anti-virus
software. By my experience there is only one 100% true fact - any
anti-virus software is way better than none. But, if that is not enough
for you, well keep on reading, otherwise, also keep on reading and maybe
you'll discover you still can do better than that.
Point beyond writing previous paragraph lies in fact it is very hard to
find a trustful resource of anti-virus reviews. I based mine solely one
the following sites Proactive Security Challenge 64, AV Comparatives and Virus Bulletin.
I did that because I found out most of the users on the web trust those
resources even their results vary for same products. This is not so
strange as they use different testing methodologies, so be sure
to read all about them on each particular site. Those three sites should
cover most of the situations you'll ever get in touch with. Be aware
that the first one mostly tests firewall possibilities, I mostly used
the second one to get an idea of real world protection tests results,
while I used the third one to get an overall idea and to "connect" and
interpret the results from first two test results providers.
Before continuing I feel like I need to say how my personal impression
is that an average user should take into consideration that results
provided on Proactive Security Challenge 64 do represent a industry
grade test, which in other words can be interpreted that 99,99% of users
will never get in touch with (be exposed to) such threats and that most
of firewalls marked red on their list will do just fine for an average
user. And by term "average" I mean regular computer usage like office
and Internet applications.
Only product I was keen to investigate about more was Comodo Internet
Security as it was only tested on Proactive Security Challenge 64 and
got highest score, while other two sites haven't tested this product.
There is a big controversy surrounding Comodo and their products due to
their continuous selling of security certificates to different publicly
recognized badware sites. Due to that fact they were banned and marked
as malware on certain software distribution sites (Softpedia). The fact
is in no way this can be take as positive approach nor put a bright
light on any Comodo product. From my previous experience with Comodo
products they tend to crawl all over your system and are quite hard to
uninstall afterwards and most of all they do eat a lot of system
resources, so no matter of any test results I personally discarded
Comodo as a product I wanted to build my security on.
Another thing I decided is not to use bundled software suites anymore,
rather to go for different anti-virus and firewall products. One thing I
was quite surprised about was a product named Privatefirewall
which got very high results and what is quite important it is a 100%
free (since recent) product. I personally primary consider this product
as firewall, but it is all-round protection tool with anti-virus
elements. Even it was only tested on Proactive Security Challenge 64, I
found out PrivacyWare the maker of this software is a recognized and
trusted company in the field of firewall software, even on industry
level. Therefore I picked this product to rely my firewall security on.
Also sSince I like to be asked to approve/deny every single connection
going in or out from my computer I found Privatefirewall as a very good
choice. This is a very good way to find out which programs actually do
what kind of requests on your system.
Now all I needed to pick was anti-virus software. Well regarding to AV Comparatives
Kaspersky is the best one in this field, but from my experience, it
does tend to eat a lot of system resources so it was out of
consideration. Also be aware AV Comparatives tested security suites not
just their anti-virus components. Since I already picked my favorite
firewall I somehow decided to stick/get back to ESET Anti-Virus as it
has a very small footprint and eats very few system resources and is
generally recognized as such. Also I never got infected before while I
was using ESET Security Suite. When looking on AV Comparatives chart it
is not very highly ranked, but once again this is a overall security
suites test, not just anti-virus test. Also be aware that absolute
difference between ESET detection rate and Kapsersky as first ranked one
was only 1.1% which was quite acceptable for me. BitDefender on other
hand was simply too paranoid for my taste while I used it, but could be a
good choice for non-experienced users.
Bottomline I decided to use Privatefirewall and ESET Anti-Virus in
combination and only the time will show if this was a good decision. I
probably missed a lot of elements in this post, but it is quite hard to
write anything in detail without making an essay and this was not my
intention. Therefore I urge on you to post your opinions with various
anti-virus and security suite software and additionally contribute to
this post's quality.
If someone is interested in obtaining free firewall software if Privatefirewall I would suggest trying out Online-Armor or Outpost Free Security Suite (available in x86 and x64 bits).
And for the end if you're looking out for a really low profile and still efficient firewall give TinyWall a try.
UPDATE:
After using Privatefirewall for a few weeks now here is my overall
opinion of it - it is a very good firewall, but it can very easily
confuse and turn down less experienced users. It does scan every single
process and asks for your approval or denial of it at least once if you
allow it for the future or every single time if you don't. But
Privatefirewall is not only monitoring Internet connections it will as
well notify you of any system change which for sure is not a very
suitable for less experienced and less demanding users (don't take this
literally - it doesn't mean less experienced users require lower levels
of security, just like in any other thing if you want to fine tune
something you'll need to get to know it better than average).
For users not wanting their firewall popping up every few minutes, I suggest to try out TinyWall. It will provide a much more comfortable protection.
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