If there is one good thing about viruses, it would be that they stimulate competition in the marketplace to make the best antivirus software. As a result, there are many great options to choose from. But you shouldn’t choose on brand name alone. After all, marketing can make an ineffective data protection program appear to be the best solution.
Take a look at what your antivirus should do:
1. It Should Scan E-Mails, Attachments, and Documents:
Your antivirus shouldn’t just protect you from downloading a virus from a website. Hackers love to nail you with viruses loaded in attachments and other documents. Your antivirus should include that protection at a minimum.
2. Centralized or Standalone?
If you’re a small business of less than five employees, you can get away with installing software separately on each PC. It’s easier to set up and costs less, but the tradeoff is more hassle. Each employee could disable their antivirus if they wanted to.
Centralized software gives you a single control panel to manage your data security across all machines. While it keeps your security uniform, it takes more technical expertise and costs more to maintain. But for companies greater than 5 employees in size, it’s the only real option.
3. How Much System Resources Will Your Antivirus Use?
This is a huge, yet often overlooked, situation. Some antivirus programs use so much memory they literally grind your performance to a halt. Others perform the exact same security functions, while not causing any performance degradation.
4. Full System Scans:
While important, the frustration with these is that they take a long time. They should happen on a weekly basis. But, you need to have the ability to schedule these during hours when users aren’t on their machines. Otherwise, they lose a ton of work time to the scans. And, your IT department can get angry and fearful if they have difficulty setting up the scans. Make sure you have the ability to do them, and to get them done outside of normal hours.
5. What’s the Company’s Privacy Policy?
This sounds amazing (or maybe not), but many antivirus programs take your personal information and resell it. You can talk to the company, or you might even talk to a lawyer.
6. What Payment Terms Work for You?
You have several options here:
• A one-time fee
• Monthly subscription
• Yearly subscription
If antivirus will be a significant expense for you, think about which make sense for your business.
If you check all those factors, you will find the best antivirus solution for your needs.
