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Today's new threats demand a new breed of antivirus software. Our lab tests show you which paid antivirus products you can trust, and which ones you should skip.
IF YOU
HAVEN'T BOUGHT A new version of your antivirus software in a couple of years, now may be a good time to do so.
Malware is evolving faster than ever, and the latest generation of antivirus software is better equipped to handle this rapid pace of change. If your antivirus software is a few years old, it may not be able to defend against this onslaught effectively, even if you faithfully download new virus definitions.
In recent years, the technology that powers antivirus software has changed dramatically: An antivirus package you purchased a few years ago may be able to stop known viruses and other known malware, but brand-new, as-yet unknown viruses can be more dangerous, and newer products do a much better job of stopping them.
So which paid antivirus program should you pick?
That's where we come in, PCWorld teamed up with AV-Test (av-test.org), a respected security-software testing lab based in Germany. Together, we looked at 13 paid antivirus products from a number of leading security companies. The top 5 are reviewed here, with the top 10 ranked on our chart below; for reviews of the other three, head on over to find.pcworld.com/71472.
AV-Test's multifaceted testing procedure looks not only at how well an antivirus product can detect malware using traditional, largely signature-based methods (that is, employing a database of known malware types), but also at how well it can block brand-new, as-yet unknown malware. AV-Test also examines how well a security product can clean up after an infection in the event that a piece of malware does get through.
This article focuses on paid stand-alone antivirus products, not free antivirus software or full-fledged security suites. Paid antivirus usually comes with better technical support options and morecomprehensive protection features than free programs. Suites go further still, offering features such as firewalls, parental controls, identity theft protection services, and more. See January's "Free, Paid Antivirus Compared" (some of our rankings have changed since that roundup) and February's "Battle of the Security Superpowers," which lists our top security suite picks.
ANTIVIRUS TRENDS
This year, more...