Security software for 2013

It's that time of year again, all of next year's products are coming out (Norton, Kaspersky and AVG have released theirs).

I currently use Norton 360 v6.0 and may upgrade to Norton 360 2013 but I'm also looking at other products this year.

I'm now going to install the trial of Kaspersky's top-tier package for 2013 - PURE 2.0.

Please tell me what you think of the 2013 products (or betas), which one do you like the most and which is the most improved?

good firewall and wpa2 settings - router.

and

cheap internet security - avg can be got for 3 quid on ebay. or last year's product (2011 or 2012) for less than 10 quid with a free upgrade to the latest one, regardless of the brand.

no security for mac - after running several different ones for more than two years and not having any virus alerts etc. but a slow computer, i simply don't bother anymore.

I've downloaded KIS 2013 and I'm now using it on one pc but it doesn't seem much different to KIS 2012 so wont bother to update other pc's that are running KIS 2012.

It would be interesting to hear how you get on with PURE 2.0 - which unfortunately isn't available as a Barclays freebee

I have not paid for a security suite for a few years now, at the moment I am using comodo internet security suite free version.
New versions will have to come out soon anyway, so they will work on windows 8 and get rid of MS security service.

no security for mac - after running several different ones for more than two years and not having any virus alerts etc. but a slow computer, i simply don't bother anymore.

You have been lucky for the past 2 years but Macs will be under greater attack in the next year or so. Why not try the free AV from Sophos and see if it slows your machine?
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/soph...

Based on av comparatives, and some other reviews, Kaspersky seems to be one of the leaders at present, along with Bit Defender.

I tend to go with Kaspersky 3-user, 2-year licenses, as I'm lucky enough that one of the users is a business client, and I get the other two users for half the price of the product.

As such, I have protection for two PCs for two years for about £30. £7.50 per year each.

I use Kaspersky.

Get a 3 user yearly one for having a few pennies in a Barclay's account.

Edit, as already stated not the Pure edition.

Edited by deleted (Sun 09-Sep-12 22:52:52)

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Based on av comparatives, and some other reviews, Kaspersky seems to be one of the leaders at present, along with Bit Defender.

I tend to go with Kaspersky 3-user, 2-year licenses, as I'm lucky enough that one of the users is a business client, and I get the other two users for half the price of the product.

As such, I have protection for two PCs for two years for about £30. £7.50 per year each.

Both KIS and BD where resource hogs , although they may of changed,KIS in particular, but B defender was seriously borked a few years back, and their support is/wasn't great either, And the Bit def didn't actually stop viruses ect getting on to a machine or executing once they infiltrated it ,even though it was supposed to have web protection, I manually had to Kill it's running processes & undo the changes it made to the registry/GP And another security app PC tools spyware doctor cleared the harmless leftovers that bd didn't flag , it was useless , kaspersky (free trial) basically brought my pc to a halt had a severe impact on performance , but that was a long time ago

KIS 2011 and earlier weren't that brilliant but I think KIS 2012 and KIS 2013 are pretty good - actually an old XP laptop runs quite well now with KIS 2013

I'm sticking with Security Essentials - its free...

And works very well indeed.. I'm running it (Windows Defender to be precise) on my main PC without issues.

i did try it, but i felt my computer was running slower. mind you, i have a 2007 macbook (now considered obsolete probably).

i meant to say sophos for mac. i did try it for a year or so, but it wasn't detecting any mac viruses so i uninstalled it. as i said, my 2007 mac seems to be running smother without it.

aye, kaspersky was very heavy on resources, but i always thought it was the best internet security software. norton seems to be doing fine, not that hungry on resources anymore.

macafee and bit defender are not that great, i'm afraid, and trend micro and others are even worse in my humble opinion.

anotehr good security software is g-data, a german product but not that popular in the uk for some reason. i thought of buying a licence from german's ebay, but in the end got an avg licenece (win xp and leopard - boot camp) for 3 quid on ebay. it was an oem licence, though.

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

I'm sticking with Security Essentials - its free...

and a resource hog, it also not that good. i have sorted out a few computers with security essentials on which have let some viruses through, some that it should have stopped.


that is why even if I did end up with windows 8 I would not trust Microsoft security,

I find it a problem on computers with less than 1GB RAM but beyond that the scanning engine is very efficient.

Waste of money. Anti-virus is pretty useless. The focus needs to be on software patching and browser configuration. Chome & FF in interactive plug-in mode = win.

That's a bit extreme, it certainly has a place. Antivirus isn't useless, but it's often misunderstood. If you are fully patched and don't do much web browsing - you may not need it. If you download dodgy content constantly, you definitely need antivirus, but you'll probably still get a virus regardless!

We all know this anyway so there's no point repeating it.

It doesn't matter how secure your OS is, some users will still press "Yes" to the "do you really want to open this 100KB executable video file" - that's not the fault of the OS or browser. Most virus infections are solicited.

Web browsing is generally safe if a system is bang up to date. It can be made even safer if the browser is running in interactive plug-in mode. "Dodgy content", whatever that may be, can be downloaded from legitimate sources.

UAC is there to protect the idiots. Most virus infections aren't solicited. They come in the form of drive by downloads and are often served by legitimate websites after the server has been compromised. The user just has to browse to a website to become infected.

I'm not convinced that is in the majority, if you go to a compromised website you will get some sort of warning from your browser asking whether you want to download said software. If it tried to execute or install itself then you will get a UAC prompt, it doesn't just magically install itself. *

That's solicited in my book....

*Not saying it's impossible, its very unlikely.

There is no warning. Code is executed without the users consent. Everything happens in the background. This is why is it so important that the OS, browser and plug-ins (Java, Flash, Adobe PDF, etc) are kept up to date.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cib-lglB7Vw

500k Mac users were infected a few months ago because Apple took a long amount of time to patch multiple Java vulnerabilities. http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/04/03/mac-malwa...

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

I find it a problem on computers with less than 1GB RAM but beyond that the scanning engine is very efficient.

Beg to differ. I found viruses with free virus checkers that MSE have missed.

Used to laugh at what a mate use to say, getting Microsoft to keep your computer secure is like asking Bin Laden to guard the white house. Can't say that anymore.

Hmm, nothing is ever going to be totally secure, but I would bet the security of a Windows 7/8 machine against any well known UNIX or Linux distro without problem.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Hmm, nothing is ever going to be totally secure, but I would bet the security of a Windows 7/8 machine against any well known UNIX or Linux distro without problem.

Plenty of loopholes in Windows, and always have been, not saying there is none in lLinux, but lets just say I feel safer with it, I just wish I could use it on this machine.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

That's a bit extreme, it certainly has a place. Antivirus isn't useless, but it's often misunderstood. If you are fully patched and don't do much web browsing - you may not need it. If you download dodgy content constantly, you definitely need antivirus, but you'll probably still get a virus regardless!

We all know this anyway so there's no point repeating it.

It doesn't matter how secure your OS is, some users will still press "Yes" to the "do you really want to open this 100KB executable video file" - that's not the fault of the OS or browser. Most virus infections are solicited.

everytime I come across someone on the net who says they got infected I ask how and never get a reply

answer is probably some dodgy porn or warez site. another possible source is the fake software driver sites.

things like no scripts, ad blockers and common sense security settings make a hell of a lot of difference, after that is sandboxing.

A longer term solution is educating computer users that by default they should be using restricted user accounts for their everyday needs, and only switching to admin for maintenance tasks. Microsoft could eg. forbid web browsers from working on admin priv accounts with a popup telling the user to switch to a restricted account first.

The problem with anti virus software is I see it as profit out of fear, getting infected isnt necessarily the end of the world eg. I wouldnt consider been infected as on par with a hdd failure unless the infection happens to decide to wipe all your files (unlikely). Bear in mind modern trojan's success rate is now about been stealthy, it doesnt want you to know its there. Whilst many anti virus can cause sigificant issues due to bugs, performance issues etc. The latest avast eg. causes havoc with microsoft outlook. mse meanwhile insists on manual scans fairly regurly and likes to also scan working the hdd hard when the machine is idle. kaspersky is just way too heavy. eset whilst one of the better ones I feel are not as good as they were years back, too many bugs in their latest versions, some of them serious BSOD ones.

I probably dont need an a/v but still run one out of paranoia.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

answer is probably some dodgy porn or warez site. another possible source is the fake software driver sites.

Agreed however as a keen user of open source software, I have noticed an increasing number of sites where they are offering their own version of a package, eg Firefox and often they are the top result in the search engine, making it very easy to click on the link by mistake. I have no idea how these packages might have been modified.