SECURITY - ANTI-MALWARE - 17.09.2010

The best all-round protection

What’s the difference?

Security suites are highly ambitious: new malware emerges continually, rogues are out for your privacy, etc. That’s why the developers regularly release new and improved versions of their security suites. Most are currently still in the 2010 stage, although some 2011 versions have been released already.

The moot question is of course: which suite offers the best protection? Not only if you don’t have such a security suite yet, but also when the time comes for renewing your annual subscription - after all, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t switch to the best product. To guide you, we put several suites to the test. In addition, we consulted the results from objective tests conducted by renowned labs such as AV-Test.org (http://www.av-test.org). Here are the combined results in a handy checklist.

Note. We will only mention the best suites.

Detection and protection

Good protection begins with good detection: if you are to install an effective buffer against malware, you should be able to detect it first. Without becoming too technical, we can say that the Internet security suites by Norton (Symantec) (http://www.symantec.com/en/uk/), AVG (http://www.avg.com/gb-en/homepage), G Data (http://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk) and Panda (http://www.pandasecurity.com/uk/) score best in terms of detection.

Note. These results aren’t based on just a couple of sample tests but refer to a three-month test period.

Cleanup

So quite a few suites score very well in terms of detection and protection. However, can they also remove the malware and clean up your computer? The following suites perform best in the tests: Kaspersky (http://www.kaspersky.co.uk), Avira (http://www.avira.com) and Panda.

False alarm

Some security suites have the annoying habit of considering reliable software as a threat all the same. They may even break off the installation of a new program for this reason. These are the suites that perform best in the “false alarm” tests: F-Secure (http://www.f-secure.com/en_UK/), Norton, AVG and Avira.

Speed

A year ago we were still hopeful: it looked as if most modern suites no longer had any negative impact on the speed of the computer. However, today we see that some security suites cause considerable slowdowns. The following suites are fastest: BitDefender (http://www.bitdefender.com), Avira and Panda.

General conclusion

Our general conclusion is based on the combination of the above results. We’ve also taken into account the fact that some suites score well in certain areas and less well in others.

Our final verdict: Norton (£49.99 for one year’s protection for up to three computers) and Panda (£50.99 for one year’s protection for up to three computers).