Study: Antivirus Programs Often Poorly Configured

[Ink]

Free antivirus software continues to slowly eat into the share of paid programs, many of which are showing gradual declines in global popularity.

How securely antivirus software has been configured varies widely between products with users of Microsoft's Security Essentials (MSE) the most likely to run protection using optimal settings, software certification firm OPSWAT has found.

Using numbers crunched from PC's running the company's OPSWAT's AppRemover tool (140,000 installations), MSE systems had realtime protection enabled in 94.6 percent of cases, slightly ahead of Avast, McAfee and Avira.

By contrast, Kaspersky Lab's Internet Security users only activated this important setting 65.5 percent of the time, with Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus users not much better.

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[NSG001]

Thanks.
Bit too much MSE in that article to be taken too siriusly

 

[Ink]

Agreed, but what they said about pre-installed McAfee and Norton software is true.

 

[malbky]

Hmm never heard of an magazine called computer world in India. Maybe i need to brush up my GK. Totally agreed AVs are poorly configured. I am making a guide for various AVs and how to set them for maximum protection.

 

[Gnosis]

I don't know how Avira Free Edition is now, but when I was using it a couple of years ago I could really tweak it into one heck of a malware blocking defense mechanism. It was tedious, as far as those things go, but it really kicked tail after the tweaks.

 

[pcjunklist]

MSE really doesn't have many options outside of default that the user can enable. It's really the Mac effect, the more you dumb things down and take away the user's decision making, the easier it is to secure.

 

[Littlebits]

MSE really doesn't have many options outside of default that the user can enable. It's really the Mac effect, the more you dumb things down and take away the user's decision making, the easier it is to secure.

Couldn't agree more, MSE keeps it simple with less room to make an error in configuration. MSE is really best for those complete novice users. I don't fully agree with this article but it is true that systems pre-installed with trial versions of Norton, McAfee and other AV's are usually not kept up by the users. They are under the impression that everything is working correctly when it is not. The users don't keep up the subscription after expiration and the AV keeps running but doesn't protect the users. They should make them where if the user hasn't bought a subscription within a few days, the AV should automatic uninstall.

Of coarse the users should notice the Action Center icon in their taskbar that warns them about no AV protection.

Most AV's function best at default settings, some users think making changes gives them better protection but most of the time it just causes false positives and compatibility issues with other software or even gives them less protection.

Thanks.