Norton Internet Security VS. Kaspersky Internet Security

[Niode]

I've never heard of Kaspersky.

I don't know much about Kaspersky

Kaspersky Labs are a Russian brains-trust of security researchers who have been around for some time now (officially formed in 1997, but with individual team members who have many more years experience than that).

What's funny is that most of the virus signatures people like Symantec (Norton) and McAfee use in their AV products are typically discovered by Kaspersky and other European research groups.

For ages Kaspersky was research-only, selling their findings contractually to the Symantecs and McAfees of this world. In 2007 they decided to sell products direct to the public, and have been pretty popular in Europe.

I work in IT Security for a finance org, and personally think Symantec and McAfee have both lost the plot (both in the enterprise and on the home desktop). Their recent products are slow to update, and with each annual release bloat out worse than the previous year. Not to mention the both of them are constantly behind when it comes to keeping up with the latest threats. Add to that the fact that they constantly complain whenever Microsoft try to up their security baseline in their latest release of Windows, and it's clear neither company is terribly concerned with true end-user security.

IMHO, Comodo's free products are good enough for desktop users:
http://www.comodo.com/products/desktop-security.php

No point paying for the bloat of other stuff if you don't need it.

And it probably goes without saying that if you have the opportunity, use Windows 7 in preference to XP or Vista (even as a self-confessed Windows loather, I gladly recommend Windows 7 over previous versions simply for the security enhancements and improvements to default rules and policies). Likewise use Firefox in preference to IE where possible. And finally, apply the security mantra: "patch early, patch often" - that goes for apps too, not just your OS.

Some great advice. Great post! I wish we had a reputation system on this forum.

[Quiet Flight]

I'll second AVG. Do not pay for antivirus.

[arion]

I haven't used any kind of antivirus software for over a year now and i have yet to notice any diffrence.

[Niode]

I haven't used any kind of antivirus software for over a year now and i have yet to notice any diffrence.

That's because the really damaging (long term, as in amount of infections) and most successful trojans/viruses are the ones that go undetected. I may be just paranoid, but if you don't have AV how can you possibly know that you don't have an infection?

botnets are a million dollar black market these days. The more undetected slaves the hackers have under their control the better. It simply isn't about doing damage to a system any more. Malware, of course still exists, but like real life viruses, an unsuccessful virus is one that kills the host. It means that it cannot propagate itself further, which is the sole purpose of a virus.

[Hatta]

I may be just paranoid, but if you don't have AV how can you possibly know that you don't have an infection?

If you run noscript, a proper firewall, and are smart about what sort of files you open it's pretty hard to get infected. i.e. turn off scripting in word and don't use adobe acrobat. If you think you're part of a botnet, check out your network traffic with wireshark.

Not that running an antivirus scan from time to time is a bad idea. But constantly running AV in the background is just a waste of system resources.

[CRTGAMER]

Neither, Norton is especially bad. My neighbor after a month of using it finally uninstalled it. Worse then a virus, anytime he did anything Norton would pop up with a warning "Click to continue".

Its Back again! Norton Security "Is it Safe? Press okay to continue ..........."


On my PC, I'll stick with Spybot, its free with consistent updates. As for the Mac don't need any.

[bacteria]

I tried Norton a couple of times in the past, hated it - made system unstable and also big memory hog. It also grabs your OS by the nuts so the only way to uninstall it properly is to reformat and reinstall the OS from scratch!

Free antivirus are fine, but paid for ones get updates far more frequently and also you get firewall built in too. I tried Zonealarm recently but it sometimes blocked the internet, and ran things slowly; better ones about. I tend to use F-Secure Internet Suite; covers heurostics, phishing, rootkits, etc; firewall, antivirus, etc. It has removed the occasional virus as needed. (I also use other anti-spyware, site testers, anti-script, etc too).

Indeed, you don't know you have a virus if your scanner doesn't pick it up, so the better view is to pay a few quid to get as good protection as you can rather than using the free ones. Being paranoid about computer protection is a good thing.

CRTGAMER - good film!

[CRTGAMER]

CRTGAMER - good film!

A little side unrelated note. But a very good link ............
I found this earlier concerning a huge Movie list of obsolete video formats. Huge data Base of Laser Discs, DVHS, VHD, HDDVD and CED.

Movie Database including store listings by country!

ANYONE WHO IS A VIDEOPHILE MIGHT WANT TO BOOKMARK THIS SITE, HUGE, HUGE MOVIE DATABASE!
LASERDISC DATABASE Home Page:
http://www.lddb.com/index.php

[Jayson]

Neither.

Microsoft Security Essentials is free and surprisingly good. It doesn't seem to be a resource hog either.

[DerekG52]

Or you could switch to linux. But I would second a free antivirus solution, also have had great experiences using NOD32.