Re: Best Anti-virus suggestions
You've got to be kidding me???
So many replies and not even a single mention of ZoneAlarm??? Hands down the best all-in-one solution for home users. Use that along side with Trojan Hunter and DeepFreeze and you are set for life.
People using AVG have no idea how easy it is to bypass their "firewall" or fool their "anti-virus", if you have the source code to any rootkit and you simply add new signatures and a recent exploit, it’s impossible for AVG to detect it or remove it. It may detect the new registry entries that have been made at certain locations where rootkits usually hide but since the signature are different and not found in their database; it would simply let them off as a genuine program. It’s the same technique Sony used for years to steal music data from their consumers.
Oh and Kaspersky lovers... you're equally screwed. I don't know when was the last time you visited a security forum but there are more Kaspersky bypass and exploits then any other security suite vendor. Only a handful of enterprises use Kaspersky, most of them go with Trend Micro.
Now, Trend Micro is a solid security suite for detection but removal?? I'm not too confident about that. Macfee and Norton are the old boys of security industry and they have learned a lot from their mistakes but still Macfee beats Norton in most case scenarios.
NOD32 lovers.... no doubt about the small footprint on the system because the software itself was developed using C++ on a Visual Studio 6.0. The biggest issue I have with them is that their firewall is crap. Their antivirus is superb but the firewall is as bad as it gets. Even Kaspersky, which I think is pretty bad, has a better detection engine then NOD32. So what you have the best anti-virus? the rest of the features are terrible.
People wake up viruses are a thing of past when the operating systems were not as mature, it’s the rootkits and trojans that needs to be detected and a firewall that blocks these intrusions. A full featured rootkit or a trojan can be less than 100KB. 100KB is grossly an overstatement; I have seen full implementation in 68KB. You can easily attach that into any software executable. Perhaps offer a free game and attach the rootkit inside it, people install it wanting to play the game but end up being a part of a botnet. For home users, your best bet is ZoneAlarm Internet Suite. It might eat some recourse but I rather be safe then sorry. And use DeepFreeze, so no matter what happen you can always go back to the original state of your computer. I have installed multiple viruses/rootkits/trojans/spywares/ad-adwares and a simple restart with DeepFreeze removes everything. Beat that :)