Here is Tip #4 for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Don’t bet on free antivirus protections.
You’ve seen the headlines or maybe have personal experience with a virus on your devices. We’ve come a long way from the “ILOVEYOU” virus of 2000 that infected more than 10 million Windows personal computers.
Cybercriminals have continuously evolved their nefarious craft so that antivirus programs, especially basic ones, are not enough.
Steps you can take:
The cost of recovery, unusable device inconvenience or replacement, and the possibility of unrecoverable information for personal or company-owned mobile devices is well above the costs for one of the more robust protective solutions of today.
“Free” doesn’t translate into being secure from attack. A lot of free programs have many of the advanced protections turned off.
Also, there are many reliable rating websites and organizations to help you choose one best for you that has proved itself under rigorous testing.
These sites offer historic views of the tested products along with their strengths and weaknesses for the many attack types of today.
Respected ratings organizations (e.g., Gartner, Forrester) are available for business-class solutions. These focus on not only the full endpoint protection suites for user devices but also a comprehensive enterprise-class solution suite — providing a hardy defense-in-depth approach expected for small- to medium-sized businesses, and up to the largest of global environments.
For personally owned devices, reasonably priced but comprehensive “antimalware” solutions abound and have versions for the various PC types and mobile devices.