What's the Best Antivirus?
Hi everyone. Leo notenboom here for askleo.com with what has been one of the most common questions
i've gotten over the now gosh 18 years that I have been doing Ask Leo! That is: what is the best
antivirus? What's the best security software that I should pick up and install and run on my machine?
Unfortunately the question while it's an obvious one, one would think there would be an answer.
There is and there isn't. One of the things we really need to understand to begin with
is that there is no best there are good and there are bad. There are better but
there is no best, and even if there were it keeps changing. There's a constant competition between
anti-virus makers, anti-malware tools that has them always trying to out do one another
in various way shapes or form. I think that it's really important to understand that
whenever you ask that question not only is there really no solid answer as to which one is the best
to the extent that there's one that is the best. right now that's going to change. It's going
to change pretty quickly. It's going to change pretty soon. One of the things that folks really
look for is what i'll call perfection, and as you can imagine by my simple use of that term
it's something that simply doesn't exist. there is no perfect anti-malware tool.
The problem is that different malware behaves differently and different anti-malware tools,
different anti-virus, tools go about their jobs differently. What that fundamentally means is that
no anti-malware tool will catch all malware. The tool you might pick today might miss x the tool
you might pick tomorrow might catch x but miss y. that's simply the nature of malware and security
software. Similarly when it comes to judging what's the best anti-malware tool for you, like i said,
different anti-malware tools go about their job in different ways. Some might use more RAM than
others. If you've got lots of RAM that's a great choice for you. Maybe if you don't that might be
one to avoid. Some are more CPU intensive as they go about their job. If you've got a high-powered
CPU with lots of cores then that might be a good choice for you. If not maybe not so. As you can see
even which one is best or better not only changes over time but it's going to depend dramatically
on your system how it's configured how you use it, what other software you have installed
and honestly your own security hygiene. Now let's confuse things a little bit more what is a virus?
Well yes there's a technical definition for what it means to be a virus, which is why i typically
refer to them as malware instead so that we at least have a slightly more objective definition
of what it is we're talking about. Malicious software. Not all malicious software comes in the
form of a virus. Technically trojans and spyware viruses, worms these are all different things so
to begin with there's already not necessarily an agreement on exactly what the terms mean.
but it gets weirder. The problem of course is is hoistware a virus? Is it malware? Well it might be
perfectly legitimate software that installed when you didn't want it. To some people would consider
that malicious. Some people would consider that annoying but not malicious. Is spyware a virus well?
it kind of depends on what kind of spyware you're talking about. To some people windows itself is
spyware. Is it malicious? Do you expect your anti-malware tools to to detect it? Of course
not and yet it is something that's on a lot of people's radar. So different anti-malware tools
are going to treat different classes of malware differently. Again whether or not that's good or
bad whether or not that's better or worse kind of depends on your own expectations and your own
definition of what it means to be malicious. Now i do have to put in a word about review sites.
Review sites continually comparing different anti-malware tools seem like they would be a
great resource to turn to to at least find out what today's best anti-malware solution might be.
knowing that it will change? That's fine. At least get a snapshot of where we are today.
there's a problem there are a lot of anti-malware review sites. Many of them are created by… you know
where this is going… anti-malware tool vendors. what they do is they will go through the motions
of providing a comparison of several different products and choosing a quote unquote winner.
Not surprisingly given that they have a vested interest in the answer they will make sure that
it's their tool that wins regardless of whether or not it really should. So different sites rating by
different criteria including perhaps making sure that it's their own product that wins really does
cast a pall on the entire set of review sites in general. Even third party places like third party
independent technology sites might also have a vested interest in the result. It's really really
difficult to know who to trust when it comes to selecting or choosing the quote-unquote
best antivirus tool. And of course anti-virus tools anti-malware tools security software they're only
a part of the solution. It would be great if we could say this is the best one and install that.
we know we can't but it'd be great if we could. even if we could we couldn't let our guard down
and i'd honestly be concerned about people assuming they could. The fact is you have
a lot of responsibility in keeping yourself safe and secure. It's on you to keep all your
software as up-to-date as possible. It's on you to secure your router and the other hardware you use
and it's on you to put it bluntly to behave safely on the internet. These are all things we could learn
how to do and as it turns out no security software, be it the best or the worst, will protect you
from your own actions. All we can do is behave as best we can and make reasonable choices. When
it comes to what software to install or not on our system, finally, i will point you at my
article What Security Software Do You Recommend? with more tangible more actionable solutions.
that say okay if i were you in most cases this is what i would do and honestly what i do is i
rely on the security software that's built into windows for 95 percent of common computer users
that's plenty especially given that you still bear the responsibility for acting safely
i know that's not the answer that a lot of people are looking for when they ask the question what's
the best antivirus tool but hopefully by now you understand why there is no answer to that
and how the responsibility comes down to the choices you make and the behaviors you take on.
Hopefully that was helpful for related links for updates for comments and more visit askleo.com/14682
I'm Leo notenboom and this is askleo.com. Thanks for watching