FriendshipGarden

GardenTalker · Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 1:36 pm Post subject: Die Spyware Die Virus Stoppers

Good reading, worth a visit

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129883;page,1/article.html

Virus Stoppers
Twenty years after the first one appeared, PC viruses are more diabolical than ever. How do you keep them off your system? Read on for the results of our rigorous lab tests of the top antivirus programs.

Trojan horses. Rootkits. Botnets. Keyloggers. These terms might not mean much to the average computer user, but to the average computer they're the equivalent of the bird flu and Ebola viruses. With money serving as the main motive, tech crooks have turned these one-time playthings of maladjusted geeks into a serious business.

To see which programs offer today's best protection, we tested eight stand-alone antivirus apps: Alwil's Avast 4 Antivirus Professional Edition, BitDefender's Antivirus 10, Eset's NOD32, Grisoft's AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus Professional Edition, Kaspersky's Anti-Virus 6, Panda's Antivirus 2007, Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2007, and Trend Micro's AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2007. These apps allow users to pick and choose their other security software (such as firewalls), and they cost less than security suites. All include antispyware protection, and many have antirootkit components to defend against devious attempts to hide malware deep within a system. To protect against unknown viruses, all of the apps we tested come with some form of proactive protection to supplement more-traditional signature-based approaches, which must match incoming threats against a database of known threats in order to block them. For more information about proactive protections, read "When a Signature Isn't Enough."

After rigorous analysis, we awarded Kaspersky's well-designed Anti-Virus 6 the Best Buy. It ended up in a virtual dead heat with the entries from Symantec and BitDefender for best malware detection honors, and it also did the best job of cleaning malware infections. At $50, however, it's relatively expensive. cont....