What to look for in Anti-Virus Software

Top anti-virus software should be easy enough for a computer novice to both use and install. The software should effectively seek out and identify virus threats, as well as clean or isolate infected files. There should be understandable reporting available for each scan and plenty of help support available, so you can be well informed of the software’s activities and capabilities. Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate anti-virus software.

• Ease of Use –Exceptional anti-virus software is simple to use, regardless of a person’s computer experience or knowledge of viruses.
• Effective at Identifying Viruses and Worms – The best anti-virus products identify infected files quickly through real-time scanning, searching for viruses in a multitude of sources, including email, instant message applications, web browsing and so on.
• Effective at Cleaning or Isolating Infected Files –Truly capable anti-virus software thoroughly cleans, deletes or quarantines infected files—keeping them from spreading throughout the hard drive or network.
• Activity Reporting – Anti-virus programs should give immediate notification of viruses found by real-time scanners and should provide an easy-to-read report of scan results, including what it found and what it did with infected files.
• Feature Set – A well-rounded feature set allows anti-virus software to provide absolute protection. The best programs are those that offer a wide variety of tools, from basic real-time scanning to more advanced, heuristic scanning and script blocking—when it comes to virus protection, the more options the better.
• Ease of Installation and Setup – Anti-virus programs should be a breeze to install, making it easy to go from installation to initial scan in just a couple clicks of the mouse.
• Help Documentation – High-end anti-virus software come with plenty of help, including support via email, online chat or over the telephone. There should also be online resources, such as knowledge bases and FAQs available for quick and convenient help.

No matter how serious a computer virus is or how quickly it is passed around, with today’s anti-virus software, you’ll always have a cure.

To read our top-ranked anti-virus software review, click here.

How Can Antivirus Software Keep My Data Safe?

It’s getting harder everyday to protect your data from the dangers posed by computer viruses. These malicious programs have evolved into multiple forms and can be contracted through a variety of ways, including opening email attachments, opening spam or by visiting corrupt websites.

Fortunately, just as viruses have grown in strength and complexity over the years, so also have the tools used to combat them. With the latest generation of antivirus software, you can give your computer a level of protection never before possible.

Today’s best antivirus software come with multiple virus scans, allowing you to schedule scans in advance, giving you access to a variety of location-specific scans and even real-time scanning, which scan your computer every few minutes for viruses—stopping them before they can do damage.

Since new viruses are being created everyday, the most effective antivirus programs offers convenient virus updates. Most antivirus software offers automatic updates which regularly and automatically check back with the manufacturer for information on new viruses, providing you the highest-level of protection at all times.

However, undeniably, the most valuable thing that today’s antivirus software brings to its consumers is plain, good-old-fashion peace of mind.

In this site, you'll find articles on computer virus topics, news stories and comprehensive antivirus software reviews that will help you make an informed decision on which antivirus program is right for you. At TopTenREVIEWS – We do the research so you don't have to.™

Working With The Windows XP Firewall

By: Brien M. Posey, MCSE

Since the release of Windows XP, there has been a lot of hype about security, and about Windows XP’s built in firewall. Although the built in firewall certainly seems like a good step in the right direction, it can be a double edged sword. In this article, I’ll explain the good points and the bad points of the Windows XP firewall.

The Windows XP firewall is designed to block all inbound packets, unless those packets are in a direct response to a query that was sent out from the machine. The firewall is designed to help you keep hackers out of your system. As you can see in Figure A, port scanning a Windows XP machine that doesn’t have the firewall enabled reveals some information that could be useful to a hacker. However, if you enable the firewall and then perform the same port scan a second time, nothing is revealed.

Figure A

Performing a port scan on a machine without the firewall reveals some useful information

Figure B

The firewall prevents port scans.

As you can see in my figures, the firewall protects Windows XP against port scanning. Unfortunately though, there are some serious issues involved in using the Windows XP firewall that you need to be aware of.

First, the Windows XP firewall isn’t a full featured firewall. Normal firewalls allow you to specifically control each TCP and UDP port. Windows XP’s firewall doesn’t provide you with this capability. Instead, it takes a point and click approach to enabling or disabling a few common ports, as shown in Figure C. The firewall’s logging capabilities are also minimal.

Figure C

Windows XP’s firewall allows you to open or close a few common ports.

Because of the limitations that I’ve just described, the Windows XP firewall shouldn’t be used to take the place of a normal corporate firewall. Instead, it should be used as a supplement. Remember that your corporate firewall does a good job protecting your organization from external threats, but does noting to protect your organization from internal threats. On the other hand, the Windows XP firewall isn’t a suitable replacement for a corporate firewall, but it can help guard workstations from hack attempts originating from within the organization. Therefore, I recommend enabling the Windows XP firewall on your workstations, but using the Windows XP firewall in conjunction with your corporate firewall.

Keep in mind though that even the multilevel firewall architecture that I just described isn’t completely secure. The Windows XP firewall does a great job blocking inbound traffic, but makes no attempts to filter outbound traffic. This means that a hacker would have no trouble using your workstations as a part of a distributed denial of service attack. Unfortunately, there’s no way to block outbound traffic at the Windows XP level, but you can configure your corporate firewall in a manner that protects your company against being used as a pawn in a denial of service attack.