What to look for in Anti-Virus Software
By shaeen
@shaeen (413)
India
August 20, 2007 12:48pm CST
Top anti-virus software should be easy enough for a computer novice to both use and install. The software should effectively seek out and identify virus threats, as well as clean or isolate infected files. There should be understandable reporting available for each scan and plenty of help support available, so you can be well informed of the software’s activities and capabilities. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate anti-virus software.
Ease of Use –Exceptional anti-virus software is simple to use, regardless of a person’s computer experience or knowledge of viruses.
Effective at Identifying Viruses and Worms – The best anti-virus products identify infected files quickly through real-time scanning, searching for viruses in a multitude of sources, including email, instant message applications, web browsing and so on.
Effective at Cleaning or Isolating Infected Files –Truly capable anti-virus software thoroughly cleans, deletes or quarantines infected files—keeping them from spreading throughout the hard drive or network.
Activity Reporting – Anti-virus programs should give immediate notification of viruses found by real-time scanners and should provide an easy-to-read report of scan results, including what it found and what it did with infected files.
Feature Set – A well-rounded feature set allows anti-virus software to provide absolute protection. The best programs are those that offer a wide variety of tools, from basic real-time scanning to more advanced, heuristic scanning and script blocking—when it comes to virus protection, the more options the better.
Ease of Installation and Setup – Anti-virus programs should be a breeze to install, making it easy to go from installation to initial scan in just a couple clicks of the mouse.
Help Documentation – High-end anti-virus software come with plenty of help, including support via email, online chat or over the telephone. There should also be online resources, such as knowledge bases and FAQs available for quick and convenient help.
3 people like this
3 responses
@braveheart07 (2601)
• Philippines
23 Aug 07
Hi, thanks for sharing this very informative information. The most important thing here is to have a firewall, antivirus, and antispyware as well as safe surf for you to be fully secured from any malicious malwares and viruses. Antivirus alone will be useless if you are careless enough when surfing the net and are not vigilant when downloading any unsecured and unknown files or software. Of course, not to mention that you need to know if the site that you are downloading is legitimate and well known.
Thanks again for sharing this.
Have a nice day!
Regards,
2 people like this
@cotton0821 (259)
• United States
21 Aug 07
This is good work. However, there is no mention of the constant updating required for good anti-virus software. New 'junk' comes along constantly and good protection requires constant updating.
2 people like this
