Antidote for your PC against virus

As the year comes to an end, you might have noticed a rise in the number of scam mails that promise free goodies for a harmless click on an embedded link. If you do not take necessary precautions, you could become a victim of hackers who have cast their net to steal your identity and sell your private information for malicious purposes.

Every antivirus vendor has stepped up its game with increasingly robust all-in-one security suites. To compile this review, we infected our computer systems to test the capabilities of some of the latest antivirus programmes. Kaspersky Antivirus, Norton Antivirus and Bitdefender 2011 emerged the strongest security tools that would protect you from cyber attacks this New Year.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011
Price: Rs 1,808 (approx, 365 days subscription per PC)

The Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 is one of the best available solution because unlike some other security programmes that tend to protect from certain kinds of virus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus guards in real time against viruses, trojans, bots, worms, and even spyware. The company has not only improved the protection modules, its new features include a system watcher that monitors application activities to allow roll-back changes from malicious actions. Besides, you can also install Kaspersky Antivirus 2011 in infected PCs.

Kaspersky AV is compatible with PCs running on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The antivirus software uses about 12MB of RAM while monitoring the computer for malicious activity, which in simple terms means you would not have problems with a slow PC. But it does tend to choke operations while running a full-system scan. If a computer is infected with malware (like in our case) and is allowed to disinfect, then the AV does not allow any other programme to run until it completes the process and you reboot the computer.

Verdict
Features like Kaspersky URL Advisor and protection of digital identity give users a brand new level of online protection.

Norton Antivirus 2011
Price: Rs 1,109 (365 days subscription per PC)

From the moment you install the Norton antivirus software, you know you have made the right choice. The user needs to launch the installer, click on the “Agree and Install” button and within a few minutes the product is ready to run. Norton antivirus has the most easy-to-comprehend user interface that requires no technical know-how. In case the PC is infected (like ours was), it launches a preinstall scanner that automatically cleans up the problem and completes installation. Besides the ease of use, Norton 2011 uses around 11MB system memory and will not slow down the PC.

Norton 2011 is capable of completing quick scans in about 47 seconds and a full system scan takes a little over 1 hour 50 minutes. Norton Insight technology – the feature that helps bring down scan time – continues to be available in Norton 2011. It scans files that might be at risk, bypassing the trusted files and files that have not changed.

Realising that social media is critical to today’s users, Norton has added features like Facebook Wall Scan, where you can ask Norton to authenticate links on your Facebook Wall that might point to malicious websites. Norton’s Pulse Update technology, introduced with Norton 2009, downloads new virus definitions almost as soon as they are posted by Symantec, guaranteeing that your scans are operating with the most updated knowledgebase.

Verdict
Light to run on older computer systems and easy to use without compromising on its antivirus cover. These are some of the features that make Norton Antivirus 2011 endearing.

BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011
Price: Rs 1,355 (approx, 365 days subscription per PC)

BitDefender’s scheduled update every hour means that an average user need not worry about updating the antivirus software every time he goes online. Another reason that puts BitDefender in the star league is that the software tests suspicious code: This feature helps protect your computer from viruses that have not yet been identified and reported.

To keep things simple, the company has split the user interface into three separate sections — Novice, Intermediate, and Expert. This feature allows users to opt for a level to interact with the security programme and get a series of personalised suggestions, warnings, and safeguards.

The most noticeable features in BitDefender Antivirus 2011 are the special Game and Laptop modes. The first one opens the firewall to prevent connection issues and disables any resource-intensive processes, while maintaining a safe and fun gaming experience. The latter temporarily tweaks security settings to prevent the antivirus from draining the computer’s battery.

Verdict
While browsing online, if you happen to crossover to dangerous web domains, BitDefender prompts you with a series of suggested privacy safeguards, relevant to your most recent activity. Now, that’s intuitive.