Almost 40 per cent of internet users have had to deal with a virus infection on their computers at some point or another, says German IT industry association Bitkom.
Most of those attacks aim to steal payment or access data for internet shops or communities. Proper protective software might have prevented the intrusions, but that raises the question: How good is the latest generation of antivirus software?
One in five users is currently going online without a virus protection programme or firewall, Bitkom notes. One option is to turn to security suites, which promise comprehensive security for their customers — for a price. Yet antivirus protection doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Many free programmes offer protection that is just as effective.
“Free antivirus programmes typically offer fewer functions than commercial programmes,” says the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI). In terms of actual user experiences, though, there is little to no difference. Even inexperienced computer users are able to find their way around the simplified user interfaces and settings options on the majority of protection software.
Organizations like AV-Test in Magdeburg, Germany, and AV-Comparatives in Innsbruck, Austria, are constantly testing security solutions for the effectiveness of their malware detection, removal of infections, and performance. The commercial programmes are typically always at the top of the rankings.
“Commercial programmes offer more complex detection mechanisms and thus protect better against unknown malware than free programs,” says Claudio Mueller from Munich-based Chip computer magazine.
Yet that doesn’t mean that free antivirus programmes aren’t capable. “Free antivirus software is much better than no antivirus software,” says Professor Norbert Pohlmann from the Institute for Internet Security at the Polytechnic University of Gelsenkirchen in Germany. Attentive surfing habits in combination with various free programmes instead of a suite can offer good protection against attacks from the internet.
“For example, you can use Microsoft Security Essentials, a programme that goes easy on a computer’s resources, together with the protection solution from ThreatFire, to establish reliable, behaviour-based malware detection,” the Chip editor suggests.
Windows Firewall should also be left activated.
Anyone with a slow internet connection will have to endure long load times for the crucial virus signatures. Also, protection programmes can make older computers and PCs low on RAM move very slowly.
Users less versed in the intricacies of internet security are best advised to find one unified solution instead of several individual programs, says Pohlmann.
“Internet users should use a security suite containing an entire packet of programmes, including virus protection, firewall, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other solutions. The user should also activate their operating system’s automated update function as well,” he says.
But security suites aren’t without their catches, either. German consumer testing organization Stiftung Warentest recently tested 13 security packages and four free antivirus programmes and came away convinced that users should deactivate the firewall in those suites.
That’s because several of the programmes are less effective than the firewall integrated into the Windows 7 operating system. The best free virus protection came from Avira Antivir Personal.
Together with Windows 7 firewall, the programme offered good protection for computers and put only minor strain on the computer’s processor, the testers found.
One current trend among virus protection solutions involves so-called cloud technologies. The virus signatures remain on the providers’ servers and are not downloaded at specific intervals as has been customary in the past.
“A comparison with the data in the cloud is usually made when the locally installed virus scanner creates a fingerprint for an analyzed file and needs to check it against the cloud,” Mueller explains. “The comparison determines whether an updated virus signature is needed or whether the file has been evaluated by other users as malicious or harmless.” For many of the programmes, that comparison process is a constant one, running parallel to the local analysis on the computer. Yet the cloud support is lost if the computer goes offline. “Users should be aware that cloud-based virus protection typically requires an established internet connection or else the function is worthless,” the BSI says.
