TechWorld: The best free antivirus programs
Scanners, firewalls, browser plug-ins, the works
By John E Dunn
09 April 10
Free antivirus started life nearly two decades ago as security's poor relation, little more than a way of ensnaring users with limited features that would give them an excuse to upgrade to paid-for software later on. A number of software vendors built their marketing on such products, even if the bigger brands were sometimes too sniffy to dare offering something as lowly as a ‘free' product.
Then the Internet happened, the browser became the dominant application, and websites emerged as a major means of distributing what became known more generically as ‘malware'. Malware included old-fashioned viruses, but also mass-distribution worms, Trojans (a major new class of program), and a cluster of applications designated as ‘spyware'.
Suddenly, the threat wasn't just good coding it was bad coding too, with the industrialisation of malware that could exploit software vulnerabilities in the OS, in apps, and especially in browsers and browser plug-ins.
Paid-for AV products found themselves doing a lot more work at a lot more layers of the software stack, and diversified into today's suites that do everything imaginable, including encryption, firewalling, backup, spam filtering, browser trace deletion, parental control, IM and P2P control, web, file and app monitoring, and all before old-style hard disk scanning is even mentioned.
The problem for security companies is that many pieces of this security jigsaw are at least partially done by free programs, starting with browsers, now secured using layers of settings and URL checking. A reasonable two-way firewall comes with Windows 7 (XP's is one-way, Vista's two-way but requires management and interaction), and of course the basic AV is handled by free utilities that many users swear by.
The fascinating thing about ‘free' is how much users get without having to reach for the credit card. But how much is really enough security and which features does the average user need and perhaps not need?
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