everyone's opinion on best antivirus/firewall?


Recommended Posts

Hey everyone, just wanted to know your thoughts on the best antivirus/firewall?   .....My families computer keeps getting viruses, and norton doesn't seem to work (norton 360)

So I am going to try ESET next ..
I searched online (google)  However I don't believe the reviews. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally think software firewalls are a gimmick and honestly the built in windows one is as good as any.

 

bitdefender and kaspersky get the highest or among the highest for protection and identification.  eset is pretty good, many here use it and I use it.  360 total security (not norton 360) is supposed to be pretty good too.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as experience goes, Norton is one of the weakest antiviruses out there.

 

That said, even with the best antivirus you can easily get viruses. Most of it has to do with what is being done with the computer. The best solution is having the family on restricted accounts and not admin accounts. This is a problem that MS tried to fix with the UAC, but people were too used to admin accounts back in XP, so I see a lot of people deactivating UAC, which should never be done.

 

From personal experience and friends, I find that Kaspersky Internet Security has a pretty solid firewall, and I've heard a lot of good things about BitDefender.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Which OS and browser are you using?

 

If you are still using XP and an old version of IE moving to windows 7 or 8 and a more modern browser would be a far better security upgrade than getting a new AV. UAC will block a lot of potential threats. Yes it can be cumbersome at time but it makes your PC way secure.

 

I'm not using any firewall or av these days other than the default ultra basic protection (router, windows firewall and defender).

 

The better AV is the person sitting in front of the PC.

 

The last time i used a real AV/Firewall Bitdefender was really really good. Dunoo if it's still the case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as experience goes, Norton is one of the weakest antiviruses out there.

 

That said, even with the best antivirus you can easily get viruses. Most of it has to do with what is being done with the computer. The best solution is having the family on restricted accounts and not admin accounts. This is a problem that MS tried to fix with the UAC, but people were too used to admin accounts back in XP, so I see a lot of people deactivating UAC, which should never be done.

 

From personal experience and friends, I find that Kaspersky Internet Security has a pretty solid firewall, and I've heard a lot of good things about BitDefender.

Norton has come up quite a bit and is among the top tier.  As with all of them though, it isn't 100%.  I think that they (antimalware softwares in general) have come up and hit the 70% mark from the 40% they used to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I personally think software firewalls are a gimmick and honestly the built in windows one is as good as any.

 

 

 

The built in firewall let all outbound traffic goes thru by default. So no it's not as good as any unless you change the default configuration using windows firewall control or another external program.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i paid for eset (got it on sale)  and i love it. 

 

but yeah, you just have to avoid dodgy sites really. and be careful what files you open.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"My families computer keeps getting viruses"

 

Then take it away from them, is it updated?  They should only be limited users on the box with no way to elevate.  Run their browser in complete full sandbox - sandboxie is really easy to use.

 

Is it being updated with flash and do you have java installed?  Is it updated?

 

There is no antivirus that can protect you from user clicking yes.. Most users infect themselves with malware which are not really viruses - and by law the antivirus software can not block something the user agrees too, etc.  There have been plenty of law suites on this front.

 

Look into say deep freeze are alternative that prevents changes to the machine, and clean on reboot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The built in firewall let all outbound traffic goes thru by default. So no it's not as good as any unless you change the default configuration using windows firewall control or another external program.

 

O_o....you know that outbound traffic is allowed out through eset and the likes as well, right?  I can ftp, rdp, connect to server shares and connect to non standard ports like plex and what have you without configuring anything on the outbound side within eset, norton 360, or any other software firewall, right?  They aren't hardened on the outbound side, they are hardened on the inbound.  I have to create inbound rules for trend, eset, norton, and the windows built in firewall to allow access to the computer from another or explicitly trust the entire subnet range.

 

 

Software firewalls I have experience with include, but are not limited to:

trend micro worry free business secuirty

symantec endpoint security

eset smart security

zone alarm

comodo

mcafee endpoint protection

kaspersky enpoint security

 

 

And do you know how many of them I have had to configure anything out of the box for outbound....I can't recall a single one.  Not ftp, not sftp, not mail, not a single custom port (connecting direct to my voip phones that don't use a known standard port, for example), no media sharing...none of it out bound.  If anything at all, comodo would pop up a message stating that this application was communicating on that port but it didn't block it unless I explicitly told it to, I was able to suppress messages if I wanted to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Common Sense Personal Edition 3.47 R3 Service Pack 2 Update 1 for x86_64 Windows.

 

Common sense does help. But I like having some sort of software watching my back. I'm still only human. I'm just using Windows Defender. No idea if it's any good however :). Paid anti viruses are overkill in my opinion (well maybe not in a corporate environment).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you must go the common sense route at least remove admin access, No user should have admin privileges apart from the admin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

O_o....you know that outbound traffic is allowed out through eset and the likes as well, right?  I can ftp, rdp, connect to server shares and connect to non standard ports like plex and what have you without configuring anything on the outbound side within eset, norton 360, or any other software firewall, right?  They aren't hardened on the outbound side, they are hardened on the inbound.  I have to create in bound rules for trend, eset, norton, and the windows built in firewall to allow access to the computer from another or explicitly trust the entire subnet range.

 

 

Software firewalls I have experience with include, but are not limited to:

trend micro worry free business secuirty

symantec endpoint security

eset smart security

zone alarm

comodo

mcafee endpoint protection

kaspersky enpoint security

 

 

And do you know how many of them I have had to configure anything out of the box for outbound....I can't recall a single one. 

 

Dunno i have not used any 3rd party software firewall or av for a very very long time. I'm not doing anything that could potentially infect my PC and i have a weekly backup anyway.

 

I'm using Windows Firewall and Defender mostly because they are there and action center bothers me if they are not enabled. But for fun i disabled them for a while once and did not get infected either.

 

Last time i used Bitdefender (a while ago) i was getting warn when an unrecognized app was trying to access the internet or even do anything. But maybe it was the real time IPS scanning and not the firewall blocking it. Not sure ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I use MS Security essentials on this machine but at home I have 360 Total Security which isn't bad and doesn't seem to tax my system much...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the 3 laptops and a desktop used by various members of my household (all running variations of Win8) I've installed the version of Norton Internet Security that is provided free as part of our Comcast service. It has done well over the past few years with no majfor issues.

 

On top of this though I ensure that none of them are admins, I am the only one, and I also use the filtering service offered by OpenDNS to try and prevent a lot of "bad" things from being accessed.

 

Its not fool proof of course but save for my teenage son, they all have good common sense on what to browse for and what not to click on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just replaced Avast with 360 Total Security and I'm quite happy with it so far. Avast was getting pretty annoying with all of its popups. 360 just sits quietly and does it's job. Never experienced any slowdowns or major resource usage with either of them - hopefully that issue is a thing of the past now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just replaced Avast with 360 Total Security and I'm quite happy with it so far. Avast was getting pretty annoying with all of its popups. 360 just sits quietly and does it's job. Never experienced any slowdowns or major resource usage with either of them - hopefully that issue is a thing of the past now.

 

One issues I ran into eith 360 Total Security is that it seemed to have issues if the logged in user was not an admin on the PC. I was using it for a while on the desktop my kids use, none of which are admins and I recall it prompting for admin login each time 360 Total Security would launch. It has been a while since I tried it of course, this was on Windows 7 x64.

 

Was I the oddman out in this case, or did it happen to anyone else? If ti did, has it been fixed?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

 

http://www.av-test.org/en/

 

I've been using 360 Security Essentials for almost a year now, on multiple computers and haven't had any issues or slowdowns. Only 2 false positives.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Antivirus: Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Firewall hardware: SonicWALL or WatchGuard.  Both offer scalable solutions to meet budget needs.

Software firewall: Don't use.

 

Also the best protection in not giving virii/malware was mentioned already - Don't give admin rights to end users.  Period.  It's standard practice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.