Beyond Anti-Virus: 2020 things to know before you buy.
An anti-virus program is an essential software utility built to protect your devices or network against viruses. If your device is infected with a malicious program without an antivirus program installed, all sorts of malicious processes could run, and cause a lot of damage. Due to this, whether your devices are running Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, or IOS, we recommend having an anti-virus program installed on the devices.
How does an Anti-Virus Program find a virus?
Your anti-virus program depends on virus definitions to detect malicious files or programs. To keep it up to date, you should let the program downloads new and up to date definition files as often as possible. The definition files contain signatures for viruses and other malware that have been found in the wild. When an antivirus program scans a file and notices that the file matches a known piece of malware, the antivirus program stops the file from running, puts it into quarantine and automatically deletes the file, unless you choose to allow the file to run anyway.
What could go wrong?
If a malicious program infects a device without an anti-virus program, it may delete files, prevent access to files (ransomware attacks), spy on you using your camera, GPS and communications, or perform different malicious activities.
Why purchase an Anti-Virus Program
Once an anti-virus program is installed and running, the program protects your devices from any newly emerging viruses or malicious programs installed on your device. Purchased anti-virus programs also schedule times to give your devices a complete scan in order to identify if there any infections. In most cases, free Anti-Virus programs, allow you to manually run a scan to check for malicious programs.
Beyond Anti-Virus
In addition to the main feature of an Anti-Virus program, as explained before, there are some additional features introduced by AV products that make the world a better place. However, the following features are not available in every Anti-Virus software. You must decide what features are the most essential depending on your lifestyle and interests.
Secured browser
Banking and payment protection is an additional feature built to protect your
financial data during online transactions. Even if your communication is secured using
HTTPS, this option enables extra security when you work remotely or connect to free
WIFI at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant or any public network. We always
recommend using a secured browser window when accessing financial data.
Products:
- ESET Smart Security Premium
- ESET Internet Security Parental Control
Parental Control
Banning children from using computers and mobile devices such as phones, tablets and
PCs is not the ideal answer if you’re concerned about what they browse online. It’s
essential for our children to be a part of the digital world, and parents just want them to be safe while online. Here are some of the AV products that have the Parental Control
feature. Although, more products are adding the Parental Control feature. NOTE: the default setting of this feature is usually set to disabled.
Products:
- Norton Security Premium
- Kaspersky Total Security
- Bitdefender Total Security
- ESET Internet Security
Dark Web Monitoring
In 2020, your personal information might be at risk due to the number of data breaches that occurred in the last decade or stolen by cybercriminals. The Dark Web Monitoring feature searches the dark web and alerts you if your information has been exposed.
Product:
Norton 360
Home Monitor
This checks the security of your network. It Identifies if there are any unknown devices connected to your home WIFI network. This feature enables extra security, which is ideal to identify if someone spying on you through home network.
Product:
ESET
Anti-Theft
AV Anti-Theft is additional protection against unauthorized access and can find your device in a situation, such as if the device is lost or stolen. In many anti-virus programs that available, this feature is turned off by default. To locate it, lock it, turn on an alarm or erase your device remotely, you need to turn on the Anti-Theft feature on your devices.
Subscribe to Cyberdrip security awareness to learn how to enable the Anti-theft feature on your all of devices, even if your Anti-Virus program has not added this feature.
References:
https://help.eset.com/glossary/en-US/technology_online_protection.html
https://us.norton.com/feature/dark-web-monitoring
https://help.eset.com/essp/12/en-US/idh_page_homenetwork_protection.html
https://help.kaspersky.com/KISA/MR21/en-us/71836.htm