We all know that we should have a good up to date anti-virus program running. But how good is your protection and is the cure worse than the disease?
If you wish to purchase protection for your PC you will probably finish up with a security suite. This package will attempt to protect you from everything (virus, trojan, hacked website, email phishing attack, parental guidance, scam websites, malicious sites, software security check, suspicious software, to name only a few), but this can come at a price. If your hardware is relatively new with plenty of RAM and a reasonable processor you may not notice the system performance impact of all this protection. If you have older hardware with less than 2 gig of RAM and a not so speedy internet connection, your security package may have the same impact as some viruses (slow system response, slow startup, slow shutdown, hard disk always busy, downloads taking forever).
You must have protection - now the question is how much?
We recommend Avast!, Avira or AVG. Each of these products is available for free, or you can purchase them with even more features. Every one of them will offer great protection with minimal overheads on your system (although we highly recommend Avast because full system scans NEVER interfere with day to day work).
Do you need a firewall?
The Windows Firewall (already on your PC) is all you need most of the time, but remember, Windows Firewall only stops stuff getting in, not out (on Windows XP in particular). If you would like the added protection of a reliable firewall which will not impact on your system too much, protect your PC from the world and protect the world (and your friends) from your PC we highly recommend Comodo. The best anti-virus program cannot always protect you, after all, if you choose to ignore the warning and run that program anyway, or click on that link to find out what it does, sooner or later you'll get a trojan, a little program that could do many things, but more often than not it simply wants to run and send information out to anyone who will listen. This information may be about you or it could just be spam - or it may be more sinister and take part in a coordinated attack on an individual or business (a Denial Of Service attack)
A simple firewall (like the free comodo) will pop up a box and ask you about any program that wants to run the first time. It is a simple matter to allow it once, everytime, or never. You will have protected your operating system, and you will have stopped it spreading to others via your computer.
We can provide the software and assist with the configuration, just ring us for advice!