Computers have revolutionized almost every aspect of life for students, from helping them learn as well as monitoring patients in hospitals, and controlling crucial manufacturing processes. This increased reliance on computer devices has also led to a rise in cyberthreats, like malware, viruses and ransomware. Antivirus software is designed to spot these threats and prevent them from damaging your PC or stealing your personal data.
When deciding on an antivirus program, it is important to consider its virus-scanning capabilities and, if it comes with a fire-wall, and how it performs in independent laboratory tests. You may also want to consider its customer support, how often it updates, and the number of devices it will protect. Certain programs, such as Norton also have additional features to protect your online privacy and help prevent identity theft.
The top programs provide a variety of protection options, including heuristic detection, which identifies behavior patterns typical of malware or viruses, and signature matching, which checks the files against a database of known malicious software. Some programs employ sandboxing technology to isolate suspicious files in an environment that is sealed and where they cannot do any harm.
A lot of the top antivirus programs are available for free, although they may not have as many extra features as paid alternatives. Bitdefender's premium version has parental controls, file shredder and password manager, but its free version scored very well and also comes with firewall. Similar to that, Malwarebytes' free version was praised by AV-Test for its top score for 2023, but was not as good in our tests for usability. Intego Mac Internet Security X9, however, provides a powerful combination of tools (VirusBarrier and NetBarrier) that caught and killed the most malware-related threats in our test.