0. EDITORIAL
============
Are free security products good enough to protect your computer?
It's a question that needs to be answered. With the internet
currently besieged by spyware, trojans and other malware agents
you can argue that we all should be protecting our computers
with the best security products available rather than ones which
are simply free.
So how good are free security programs?
It's a tough one to answer as it's hard to generalize. If
pushed, I'd probably say they are very good indeed but not
necessarily the best.
Take the case of the free AVG Anti-virus program. It's a great
program that’s widely used by subscribers to this newsletter. In
fact it's one of the programs I recommend in my "46 Best-ever
Freeware Utilities" list.
Good though it is, AVG is not in my opinion the best anti-virus
program available. I suspect that title belongs to one of the
commercial products NOD32, Norton AV, PC-Cillin or maybe F-
Secure. You can argue which one but they may well all be better
than AVG.
You can see this clearly from a table I featured in last month's
issue of the newsletter. This table shows the number of
occasions since 2003 that various AV products have received a
perfect score from Virus Bulletin newsletter's monthly tests.
NOD32 10/10 100%
Norton 9/9 100%
F-Secure 9/9 100%
Trend 8/8 100%
Kaspersky 9/11 82%
McAfee 8/10 80%
AVG 6/8 75%
Norman 7/10 70%
F-Prot 6/9 67%
Avast 6/9 67%
You don't need to be a scientist to conclude that AVG and
another free program Avast have simply not performed as well as
the top commercial products.
This finding coincides with my own experience testing trojans
over at
www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com. AVG has performed
well in detecting trojans, but not as well as commercial
products like NOD32.
If you use AVG you are probably starting to feel a little
depressed at this point but read on, this story has a happy
ending. Better still, it's a happy ending with a moral.
The Virus Bulletin results give a misleading impression. They
imply that the top anti-virus products have perfect detection
rates while the rest fall short.
This is not the case. All AV products have less than perfect
detection rates, the top products included.
All the Virus Bulletin results show is that in specific months
the top products detected all the top 100 viruses in circulation
in that month. Had they tested the top 1000 I suspect every
product would get less than 100% detection. In fact, I'm certain
of it.
Computer security is like any other kind of security. Perfection
does exit. It's a numbers game where you have to balance the
level of protection against the cost of providing that
protection.
Your current car is probably quite safe to drive but it's not
perfectly safe, no car is. Moreover, I bet there are safer cars
than yours so why don't you drive one of those?
The answer is simple; you've traded off some safety for other
factors such as cost, convenience and personal model preference.
Computer security is no different. It's all a trade off.
Let's say AVG detects 92% of all viruses and NOD32 95%. I'm just
making those numbers up but I suspect they are not too far off
the mark.
What cost are you prepared to pay to lift your detection rate
from 92% to 95%?
Some of you may well be prepared to fork out $39 for NOD32 to
get that increment in protection, others not.
But there are other ways of lifting the detection rate.
All you have to do is add another layer of security in addition
to AVG. Furthermore it's easy to do using free products.
I know because I've just proved it experimentally using a series
of malware detection tests with AVG and NOD32.
First up, the results of my tests confirm that both products
detect most malware products but NOD32 detects slightly more.
Second the tests also reveal that even NOD32 missed some malware
products entirely.
Third and most importantly, the tests show that by layering
protection by combining AVG with another free product, Ewido,
the overall detection rates were higher than using NOD32 alone.
You can find the results of the tests on the Tech Support Alert
web site at
http://www.techsupportalert.com/free-vs-paid-av.htm
Let us now return to our original questions:
Are free security products good enough to protect your PC?
My answer is yes, particularly if you use several products to
give layered protection.
Do commercial products give better protection?
With AV products, the answer is yes again. However the level of
protection you get from using free products in layers may be
more than sufficient for most users’ needs.
See, I told you this story had a happy ending ;>)
See you next month.
Gizmo
[email protected]
A buddy of mine who lives 300km away told me a few weeks ago he's thinking of buying a new computer because his current one is so slow he can't get anything done. I would clean up his computer but he lives too far away. This is a very common problem..
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