While I have certainly heard lots of people complain about Norton, somehow it remains the leader in detection and removal of viruses, worms, and other malware. Strangely enough, this distinction does not extend to Norton 360, which is not as effective as Norton Internet Security — and I have no data on their standalone antivirus. So now that I’ve made that clear, here are my rankings based on a little Google research.

Best Overall:

• 1. PC Tools Internet Security ($) / Spyware Doctor with Antivirus ($)
• 1. Norton Internet Security ($)
• 2. Panda Cloud Antivirus (free)

Best for removal (cleaning up an infected system):

1. Norton Internet Security ($)
2. PC Tools Internet Security ($) / Spyware Doctor with Antivirus ($)
3. BitDefender Internet Security ($)
4. AdAware (best at removing scareware only) (free)

Best for blocking (protecting a clean, uninfected system):

1. Panda Cloud Antivirus (free)
2. PC Tools Internet Security ($) / Spyware Doctor with Antivirus ($)
3. Norton Internet Security ($)
4. Prevx 3.0 ($)
5. McAfee Internet Security ($)

Other decent titles:

• Kaspersky Internet Security ($)
• Avira AntiVir (free)
• Avast! Free Antivirus
• Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
• A-squared Free
• Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (free)

Not recommended:

• AVG Free
• FortiClient ($)
• IOBit Security 360 (free)

Anything not mentioned here is mediocre.

NOTE: NOD32 by ESET has the most advanced heuristics engine on the market. However, the best definition-based scanners still outrank it in terms of detection rate. The main benefit to such advanced heuristics is protecting from zero-day exploits, but in practice, not many people are on the receiving end of such attacks.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 11:04 and is filed under Lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.