We’ve all been to a doctor at some point in our lives to be vaccinated in order to either preclude entirely or reduce the risk of being infected by a particular strain of virus or other infectious ‘bug’.
Imagine if the doctor gave you a choice: “Well I can inject you with a legitimate vaccine that I will have to bill you for or you can just go to the chemist and get the free vaccine and inject yourself.” You’d probably ask the doctor what the differences between the two vaccines are. “Well, the legitimate, paid-for medication is sourced from a reputable international drug company. It’s been thoroughly tested, has been proved to be effective and doesn’t have any known negative side effects. The free vaccine, on the other hand, will probably be effective 80-90% of the time, but it might also result in some unpleasant side effects – we don’t really know where it’s sourced from or how thorough the research and testing process is.”
Which vaccine would you choose? There really isn’t a choice, is there? Why is it then, that when choosing to protect business critical data – the lifeblood of a company – many people choose a free antivirus solution? The logic that should be applied is no different to deciding on whether to follow the doctor’s advice in the example above. It’s best to choose a legitimate antivirus solution if you want to ensure the best possible protection, even if this usually means that there is an upfront cost involved. This upfront cost is often a whole lot less than the resultant cost of using a ‘free’ solution.
Check out the referenced infographic to get an idea of which antivirus solutions are the most effective in a real world protection test.
The latest ‘Hall of Fame’ test results (April to July 2014) rate Panda antivirus as the #1 performing antivirus engine. Real world protection tests simulate the environment that you and I have in our businesses on a day-to-day basis and are thus a great reference for solution comparisons. Check out the details of how real world protection tests are conducted here.
The Panda antivirus and end-point protection solution is also rated #1 in the ‘false-alarm’ test. What is a false alarm or false positive? Virus patterns or ‘signatures’ are often designed to appear similar – or almost identical – to legitimate software executable files, for example financial applications. If your antivirus solution is not able to identify exact virus signatures, the solution may ‘think’ that your legitimate business application is actually a virus due to the similar signature. This will lead to frustration and downtime, because the legitimate application is blocked and cannot be used. It will also lead to undue duress, because you think that your computer has been infected when in fact it has not, and unnecessary support costs – which negates the entire premise of using a free solution in the first place.
Furthermore, the Hall of Fame results show that Panda antivirus is rated #1 in the performance test – the final test depicted on the infographic. In an ideal world, when faced with a choice of product, you’ll choose the solution with the lowest impact every time.
The AV Comparative test ranks Panda antivirus as the solution with the best protection score, a solution with minimum impact on your IT environment. Panda antivirus is also scored as the lightest and fastest product and is acknowledged to be an extremely stable solution.
To find out more about Panda antivirus, download our guide, “Change or renew your antivirus solution”here or download the datasheet for Panda Cloud-Based office Protection here.