Antivirus, Internet Security and “Total Protection” Software

Posted on: October 26th, 2010

This is an education article to explain what’s the difference between these software solution when you’d need them.

Let’s start with the first one:

Antivirus

An antivirus software is there to prevent unwanted software to get on the computer, and to remove them if they got on. It usually stops not only viruses but other unwanted software like spyware (information stealing programs) and sometimes adware (advertisement pushing software). I consider having a good antivirus software to be a necessity if you have a Windows based computer. For Apple machines it’s not so much a necessary because they are not plagued by viruses.

Antivirus software are usually always “on” (running) and that’s actually a good thing because you could encounter a virus at an unexpected place. But it also means that it inevitably slows the computer down. A good antivirus software works efficiently and has little effect on the normal operation of the computer. The start-up time of the computer is always be longer if you have an antivirus, although it should not add more than 10-20 seconds to the start-up.

In a nutshell an antivirus is necessary to have but “expect delays”.

Internet Security

These kind of software packages add other components to the basic antivirus protection. The usual components are:

Firewall: to control what comes in from and goes out to the internet.

Phishing detection: a module to recognize fraudulent websites and emails that would trick you into revealing personal information, passwords, etc.

Spam filter: to recognize and get rid of unwanted emails.

The question here is “do I really need these?”. I my personal experience the answer is: most likely not. Why? Well, let me go over each of these components.
Firewall: it creates more issues than its worth. Internet access, printing and file sharing issues are frequently caused by these firewall software. Windows already has a firewall that works well.
Phishing detection: it sounds good but in practice it doesn’t work too well because phishing websites pop-up too fast to be added to a database quickly enough. You can’t really rely on these too much to protect you.
Spam Filter: My arguments here are pretty much the same as with the phishing filter. Not very effective and your email software most likely already has one.

Another aspect of Internet Security applications is that they hook into many aspects of the system in order to control and detect, and this can lead to malfunctions and strange behavior. For example a failed update of the Internet Security software can prevent the computer from accessing the internet at all.

I think this is the case when “more is not better”. There are probably cases when a more comprehensive protection is needed than an antivirus but most computer users don’t really benefit from it, quite on the contrary, they get a slower computer and possible connection problems.

“Total Protection”

This category doesn’t really have a set name, yet. Sometimes “360″ is used to indicate an all-encompassing solution. In this case it means on top of a Internet Security solution there’s a backup and/or system maintenance module.

When I hear that a software incorporates all that you’d need for such and such, then I think of the rule that seems to hold true that it does a lot of things but does none of them too well.

While it’s nice to have access to many things in a central location the down side is that as the complexity of the software increases the likelihood of something malfunctioning would increase as well. If you have separate application for backup and system maintenance then you can easily address the problem with these on an individual basis. In an integrated system the problem might be stemming from a common component that’s harder to find and correct.

I also frequently see that the additional features of these total protection software are not used by the users. So it’s usually not worth the extra money.

I’d recommend using software that does one thing and does it well, not a “Swiss army knife” kind.

Summary

In general, computer do need some kind of protection against viruses and other unwanted software and actions. The trick is to find the balance on how much speed are you willing to sacrifice and how much restrictions you want on your computer that might interfere with normal operations. I think a good, effective antivirus is a good compromise on that. Along with the properly updated, maintained and configured system it will give the protection needed while keeping the computer humming along.

I’d also like to reiterate that no protection software is 100% effective. Some are better than others but humans will always be able to out-smart machines and create something that slips through. That’s why it’s important to have the computer user (you) educated in this matter as well. If you haven’t done so, please read the other articles in the Virus Corner.

Did you find this information useful?
Please consider donating.

You can leave a comment for the above article. Comments will not show up automatically but will be reviewed and incorporated into the article if they contain useful information.

cforms contact form by delicious:days