I’ve written previously about PC anti-virus / PC security programs. Annual PC World reports. Both free and paid (subscription) products. The best? Well, this recent PC World article “Recent antivirus tests are bad news for paid security suites” (January 30, 2019) has an interesting take on the question and the status of free options.
Paid security suites offer a variety of services, but their basic AV capabilities are being equaled by free apps.
Traditionally, Microsoft’s Windows Defender was considered the “baseline” product, one which the paid suites would have to surpass to prove themselves worthy. And Windows Defender still retains a “Certified” ranking, and not the “Top Product” award that the others have.
But if you rank each suite by its “protection” ranking, Windows Defender comes in sixth out of the 20 suites AV-Test evaluated. … Avast’s free antivirus suite blocked everything, both zero-day and prevalent malware.
Independent German research house AV-test ranked 12 products.