Antivirus Software
Real-time protection capabilities: This is arguably the most important, baseline feature of any modern antivirus. While manual scanning was perfectly fine decades ago, modern malware is incredibly resourceful and capable, meaning you need regular scans and live monitoring of your PC to watch out for ransomware and more traditional malware attacks as they happen, letting the antivirus stop them in their tracks before they can do too much harm.
“[Any] antimalware solution must continually interrogate incoming files and packets in real-time to determine if they are malicious in nature,” Schwarberg says. “Additionally, the solution must allow the user to run scans at any time or schedule them in the future.”
Feature set and additional security tools included: There are a range of additional features that come as part of most modern antivirus suites. These can include useful tools like VPNs, password managers, cloud storage, tracking and detection of phishing websites and emails, blocking of malicious links, and ransomware protections.
“The best antivirus software would also be the best anti-ransomware tool, as well,” says data-driven defense evangelist at KnowBe4, Roger Grimes. Although he’s skeptical that a targeted ransomware attack on an organization can be stopped by off-the-shelf applications, they do provide a layer of defense against more randomized, chance-based ransomware attacks.
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