Best Antivirus Software That Can and Will Protect Your Data

One of the best features that the Kaspersky Total Security suite offers, in our opinion, is its Safe Money technology. The Safe Money feature is a special browser created for handling money-related tasks (hence, the name): online purchases and banking. It can also be used for managing sensitive documentation or, basically, for everything you find you need it to as it is customizable. The technology works by adding several layers of protection to your connection as well as by checking the website you are visiting for suspicious activity, adware, phishing possibilities, etc. This way, you can be absolutely sure that when you fill in the form with your credentials, credit card information, and other sensitive data, no one will be able to steal them. Your identity and your money are as safe as they can possibly get.

Nowadays, children get their hands on gadgets quite early. Some would say, much earlier than it is safe. And there is little we can do to protect them from clicking the banner leading to a harmful website save physically restricting their Internet access, and this can backfire when kids find their way online elsewhere. Kaspersky takes care of this problem and does it splendidly: having purchased the Total Security suit, you get the Safe Kids feature for free (it can be purchased separately from the suite).

Safe Kids allows parents to set an unlimited number of kids' profiles and set individual restrictions for them; it is extremely useful if you have several kids of different ages and don't want to forbid the older ones the same things you protect the little ones from—after all, as children grow up they often need more freedom or simply are to be protected from different things. The problem with a child's freedom is also faced using another feature in the Safe Kids functionality, the one that is not yet common among computer antivirus software creators. We're talking about the option to set not only a strict ban on certain categories of content but use a warning. This warning may be ignored by the kid but the parents will be notified of it. Finally, a child has the opportunity to request the ban lifting via the software if they believe it is unjust, and this might become a reason for communication and bonding.

The Data Safe feature is another convenient function the AVG Internet Security offers you. With it, you can create an unlimited number of folders for all your sensitive files and encrypt them so that no one except you and your trusted people could see them. You'll say, encryption is nothing new in computer antivirus software but more of a must-have and you'll be mostly right. However, the peculiar thing in the AVG version is that you do not encrypt your whole data but you can separate the files by some kind of feature and put them orderly for much faster and hassle-free searching in case of need: your business documents will not mix in with your kids' photos and the love letters from when you first started dating your lover. The default size of the folders is 2GB but you can change it in the settings.

The AVG Internet Security will definitely protect you when you work with the Internet as well—it has near perfect marks when it comes to recognizing spam, scam and phishing attempts in your emails; if you download unsafe files or are redirected to a suspicious link, AVG will notify you of that and recommend you do not run the task. You can feel safe when you make online purchases as the system will protect your data and credit card information. The real-time security updates and the behavior-based detection make it nearly impossible to trick this Windows/Android/Mac antivirus software into allowing the harmful files behind the firewall. All in all, the AVG is a solid quality computer antivirus software by a well-known reliable company.

In this age of extensive social networking, cybercriminals do not shy away from using them to lure innocent unsuspecting victims to the websites that will infect computers and gadgets with Trojans, viruses, and all kinds of other malware. That's why protection for social networks has become an essential instead of a nice bonus.

If you are a user of either Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox, the Trend Micro Windows and Mac antivirus software suite includes a special extension to help you navigate your social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. The extension is created based on the URL-rating system also included in the suite and it will analyze the links that pop out in your feed and show you how reliable they are and if it is wise to click them. The safe links are highlighted green, questionable will have yellow marking, and if there is anything recognized as malware inside, you'll see a red cross.

Trend Micro's Folder Shield is an extremely easy to use and highly well-performing additional layer of protection for your computer. Basically, all it does is restricts the access of unknown programs to the contents of certain folders you set. It sounds really simple (and it is) but it is actually a very effective tool against ransomware, a popular threat lately. It stands guard against any suspicious program and it uses behavioral detection, meaning even zero-day threats shall not pass.

The more sophisticated the laptops become with time, the more users tend to choose them over stationary desktop computers—after all, if you have to choose between two devices of a similar performance but designed in different form-factors, it is logical to choose the more portable one. But with high portability comes the increase in the theft danger since the criminals no more need to break into your home and carry a ton of wires, not mentioning the weight and bulkiness of an actual desktop computer. That's why some companies that work in the field of computer antivirus software now widen their reach to the anti-theft features. The ESET company is one of those.

The Anti-Theft feature was included in the Premium package before but now it comes with the basic suite. You will have to create an account with the ESET online portal called My ESET and, in some cases, make some settings adjustments to use it but it only takes a couple of minutes and is easy enough to follow with the offered directions. The soul of this feature is that it creates a phantom user account on your PC and, if your device is either lost or stolen, you can log in to your My ESET account and push the "My device is missing" button. Upon this, your device, wherever it is, will be rebooted and completely locked—the person trying to use it will only see the phantom account where the access to all the folders is locked. In case your laptop is not stolen but lost and the person who has found it has no malicious intentions, you can set the computer to display your contact info to return the device. Overall, a really handy option for every mobile user.

A completely new feature in the ESET suite is the UEFI Scanner. UEFI is the firmware in Windows computers that was created to replace BIOS and if your PC has it, the ESET Advanced Internet Security will scan that firmware for malicious threats as well. With this scanner, even the deep penetration attempts on your device by criminals will not be successful.

The F-Secure virus and malware protection software is a very basic product. It offers high-quality protection against all types of malware that gets into your computer but it has next to no bonus features. It will scan your computer at a nice deep level, and it will also check the attachments in your incoming emails but it has no URL blocking and you will have to run the check on your external devices like USB drives manually as it is not automatic. That being said, this lack of bonus features makes the F-Secure antivirus software for Windows the simplest product ever to handle; even a complete novice will have no problems running a scan. And when you are looking for a cheap virus protection option, what matters is that at a price, it performs at a good level and not how many features it has. Looking from this point of view, the F-Secure is one of the best options.