Best AV (free and paid)?

[Dos_Box]

To be honest, for the past few years I have always used Microsoft Security Essentials and have never had an issue with it... although I don't dig deep enough into how well it ranks in terms of other products in terms of detection etc.

 

You can called me biased! but this comment is from

 

James.

 

That's the problem James. Over the past year or so SE has been slipping down the rankings in terms of detection and effectiveness. We need something more effective now.

[Arthur]

Over the past year or so SE has been slipping down the rankings in terms of detection and effectiveness.

That's because the team that worked on making MSE look good in tests is now spending their time making the anti-virus better at detecting real-world threats.

 

"We used to have part of our team directed towards predicting test results and figuring out what might be in someone's test. There's always a cost to that. If they are doing that work, they are not looking at those threats that are affecting our customers. We always felt that was wrong. There’s something not right about that – we’re not doing the best job for our customers." – Holly Stewart, quoted in PC Pro (Source)

[Soulfish]

Using F-Secure on my current PC, but found that the interface was too consumer friendly for my liking. Currently using BitDefender on the other halfs laptop and seems to work well so will likely move to that for my machine as well. Both are the full paid versions

[john]

I use Avast Pro on all my own kit got a nice bundle license a few years ago and its great and hasn't been any trouble at all.

[Arthur]

Antivirus is Dead: Long Live Antivirus! « Krebs on Security

 

Crypting services are the primary reason that if you or someone within your organization is unfortunate enough to have opened a malware-laced attachment in an email in the first 12-24 hours after the bad guys blast it out in a spam run, there is an excellent chance that whatever antivirus tool you or your company relies upon will not detect this specimen as malicious.

 

In short, as I've noted time and again, if you are counting on your antivirus to save you or your co-workers from the latest threats, you may be in for a rude awakening down the road.

 

Does this mean antivirus software is completely useless? Not at all. Very often, your antivirus product will detect a new variant as something akin to a threat it has seen in the past. Perhaps the bad guys targeting you or your organization in this case didn’t use a crypting service, or maybe that service wasn't any good to begin with.

 

In either case, antivirus remains a useful — if somewhat antiquated and ineffective – approach to security. Security is all about layers, and not depending on any one technology or approach to detect or save you from the latest threats.

 

@Dos_Box. In addition to the anti-virus software, you may want to add some additional layers of security like MalwareBytes Premium / Hitman Pro and Microsoft's EMET.

[mac_shinobi]

Paid I would say NOD32 by ESet or Vipre

 

Free I would say Avast

[Zoom7000]

I've never really looked past MSE pre-Windows 8, and I'm happily running Windows Defender in Windows 8. However, I don't like that it doesn't have a right click context menu option to scan a file or folder for viruses.

 

I'm tempted to open a Barclays account and put a pound in and just leave it there to get the free Kaspersky offering for my Mac

[Dos_Box]

I've never really looked past MSE pre-Windows 8, and I'm happily running Windows Defender in Windows 8. However, I don't like that it doesn't have a right click context menu option to scan a file or folder for viruses.

 

I'm tempted to open a Barclays account and put a pound in and just leave it there to get the free Kaspersky offering for my Mac

 

+1 This. It's very annoying that such a basic yet essential feature of any AV software is missing.

[Zoom7000]

+1 This. It's very annoying that such a basic yet essential feature of any AV software is missing.

 

I read a rumour some where that the reason for this omission was to avoid anti-competitive lawsuits etc - But it's still annoying that it's missing!

[Arthur]

It's very annoying that such a basic yet essential feature of any AV software is missing.

It's easy to add if you want it though.

 

http://winaero.com/blog/add-scan-with-windows-defender-to-explorer-right-click-context-menu-in-windows-8-1

[Zoom7000]

It's easy to add if you want it though.

 

http://winaero.com/blog/add-scan-with-windows-defender-to-explorer-right-click-context-menu-in-windows-8-1

 

Unfortunately this only works with folders and not individual files.

 

EDIT: I just noticed this reg tweak has a file scan addition. I'll give it a try when I get home!

Edited May 13, 2014 by Zoom7000

[difinity]

I know Microsoft Security Essentials and System Center Endpoint Protection only warn of infected files by default, AVG blocks access to the dubious files.