The Anti-Virus Tier List
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ม.ค. 2024
- Most Antivirus software is terrible... let's break down what they look like in 2024! .
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I recently visited a customer with a "slow laptop". They had AVG, Avast, Norton and McAfee all installed at the same time!
How that thing ever booted up is beyond me.
personally I like to add 2 more AVs, just to be on the safe side. Having 5+ is too taxing on the computer, but 5 are the sweet spot if PC is up to date with hardware.
Thats like wearing 4 condoms. It doesn't make you safer and will take forever to "load".
@@viralshark 4 condoms actually and most certainly make it safer.
LOL@@viralshark
"How that thing ever booted up is beyond me." Simple, none of the programs could agree on how/when to crash.
The best line “if your computer gets infected every time, there is a problem between the chair and the keyboard”. That is priceless. 😂
Right up there with "The problem with your car is the loose nut behind the steering wheel!" 😃
classic
PICNIC
As a old help desk guy from the mid 90's, it was Problem exists between keyboard and chair.
PICNIC - Problem in chair, not in computer.
"You should not really trust any tier list...."
Procedes to make tier list.
Well played Sir. Well played.
still there is no links
You definitely shouldn't trust his tier list.
He meant (obviously) tier lists with affiliate links. You get these when you google "best antivirus". Sites put up on the web for the express purpose of fishing for google hits to feed their affiliate links.
@@cryptoafc7655 Yeah and there is no way we can find these products on our own without any links.
I received a free ESET license from work, and it seems to be good so far, but the assisted learning mode sure causes a lot of popups. We use it in our office and it killed an attempted ransomware attack that had brute forced a domain admin password dead in its tracks, so I definitely rate it highly.
Similar experience here but I just turned off the pop ups.
I've been using ESET since it was recommended to me by my coworker at the PC repair shop I worked at at the time.
Glad to see other people calling out Norton and McAfee for the dumpster fires they are. It's insane how many people still don't realize just how bad those programs have gotten.
I used to have Norton years ago and it really was that bad, slowing down my PC and browsing and so on. Im using Malwarebites for years now and Im absolutely satisfied.
I have only had experience with McAfee and it's just terrible. Fake popups, trying to force me to pay and more. If you look at trustpilot reviews of McAfee people are saying McAfee charges you randomly and auto renews subscriptions without your consent or any prior warning. Luckily I have never purchased any subscription from McAfee and I just think that someone should take legal action.
to be honest norton was pretty good a good while back, mcafee I can't remember a time they were decent lol
@@nixulescu9399 They were okay until they merged with LifeLock, and ever since they've been a pile of shit.
I'd say they have been bad for quite a long time.
Removing Norton and McAfee completely without a trace from your computer tends to be harder than getting rid of some of the most troublesome viruses
*Laughs in Revo Uninstaller*
What "trace" can McAfee leave behind?
I recently got a new laptop and it came with McAfee pre-installed, and I just uninstalled it through "Add or remove programs".
@@Maros554 registry keys and leftover files that the default uninstaller doesn't remove
@@aiodensghost8645 Avira is so bad that even Revo couldn't completely uninstall it. I had to reimage the customer's machine.
Does bcu help tho?
As IT enthusiast for ~20 years (not working in business for 15 - now only fixing PCs / laptops for people on the side occasionally) - I completely agree with this list and all the tips and insights provided. Really great worth recommending video for people who maybe don't know much about this stuff. Funny how this popped up as suggestion on the side of watching astrophysics video :)
Also internet with current OS versions is relatively safe space if you don't register and visit fishy websites and don't open attachments from unknown emails. The biggest risks for modern day user are data breaches and leaks on all the service websites hundreds of millions are using - like multiple google breaches, all sorts of social network data breeches, etc, where they leak your passwords and other data. Hell even leaking email address is bad thing because you land on spam lists which are also used by malware senders, scammers, and what not. And all this danger is not on client side nor out of his fault.
Been using Malwarebytes for years and it detects a lot while their scans seem to be going strong too. I often use the manual scan of individual files through both Malwarebytes and Windows Antivirus.
MB also can act as ad blocker for YT. That's mean YT's ads is treated as malware by them, Ha Ha 😂
@@zenedhyr7612 ads can contain malicious program also ads are annoying.
I can vouch the McAfee one. I once worked at a hospital that had them loaded everywhere and it turned i7 6th gen laptops to Celeron Ds.
Maybe it was mining on the cpu
The bloat in McAfee and Norton has grown tremendously over the years. Ideally a software suite should be more efficient than individual programs.
McAfee is good for heating: you can turn the thermostat 2 degrees lower.
Ideally yes, in practice I've never seen that happen.
tbf, sometimes that can be windows settings that can be really turned up to 11. We had work laptops that didnt use anything like mcafee but they ran like complete ASS compared to the same spec laptop running a clean install. The management settings i'd seen in another youtube video years ago and suddenly it made sense. There was so much stuff you could enable in an enterprise setting that i didnt realise even existed despite my experience. But boy does it slow things down!
Honestly, the info on why not to trust influencers who get kickbacks is more critical than the tier list.
Agreed! I knew most lists and articles are just looking for cash and clicks. But 50% kickback is insane
15%
I guess that does raise the question "How much kickback can you get from WebRoot?" ;-)
What really grinds my gears are the content mill, SEO 'articles'. They're all useless and clog up my search results.
The real S tier antivirus is Kaspersky. Yeah it might be spyware, but are you sure all the others aren't? Also even if you don't have any antivirus at all, I'm pretty sure the intel agencies can still access your shit in a way or another. Just think about the Intel ME and the AMD counterpart, they have processes running below Kernel level, and even the drivers themselves could have backdoors.
I've been a pirate for more than a decade and ESET has never failed to protect me from dangerous sites.
webroot heuristics are pretty good. you always risk with pirated software, but when starts acting up, you know it's not legit. I remember viruses being super pesky back in the day. later ones werent that crazy. if you can detect it tries to go trough a firewall or something, and you can stop it, it's already safe. havent encountered too many fake downloads, I pay more attention to sources tho.
Have you ever got malware from fitgirl? Heard many people swear they never got problems.
I remember hearing a news story years ago about Kaspersky unearthing a highly secretive government intelligence operation because it's detection was soo thorough
The reason UK Gov stopped users installing kaspersky is because it exposed a lot of stuff GCHQ was using against people. They tried to discredit the company.
Kaspersky probably is the best AV in terms of raw skill, but being Russian ..... nope. I don't recommend anyone use any software developed in Russia or China. Their govt's probably have their hands in everything.
US is equally worse
you are funny...
@@Jeff-66a very naive suggestion.
Having worked in tech support, the words "the problem is between the chair and the keyboard" rang so true. Some people just don't know what they're doing and blindly click on anything. I have a hard time dealing with parents and in-laws who constantly find themselves with issues.
@dreaper5813 they will still have issues on then and depending on what they want it can be even worse.
You should be thankful for those people who don’t understand computers as well as you do. If they weren’t there, you and I wouldn’t have a job.
@@jeffreykoerber6595 I never said I wasn't. That doesn't make the statement any less true.
In my country we have a saying: "The best defense is common sense". Unfortunately not too many people seem to have that.
Termed a 'KCI' error (Keyboard-Chair Interface). We use it informally when discussing support issues.
You forgot the most important security software: ad blockers
Honestly, I only use AdBlock on Arch Linux and stay away from downloading suspicious files
Yup. Considering you get viruses from the web and it's very unlikely you get them in any other ways, ublock-origin is actually the best antivirus!
Plus it's safe as you don't need it to run in kernel mode unlike actual antivirusese
same (i'm on windows, forgot to say that)
@@OnlyMarcoS1 He just needed a place to tell people he uses Arch...btw.
Yep, you don't really need an antivirus that much if you only use little non free and mostly free software
Using linux helps too, of course.
Thanks for the great video! I have one suggestion: if I understood correctly that your latest experience with the F-Secure one is from 2016, I'd recommend you give it another go in 2024 :) The detection rate (and the whole package) has developed quite a bit.
My experience back in the early 2000s, norton was dependable, but years later ended up being a nigtmare. It became so heavy, slowing down the pc a lot, and corrupting the os when you uninstall it.
Working tech support back in the day, I distinctly remember commenting on how the Norton Suite trial would essentially start behaving like malware as soon as the trial period was over. Computers would display all the typical symptoms of being infected to the point that they seemed near unusable. Then, they would magically come back to life as soon as you uninstalled it. Really, the only worthwhile piece of software from Norton is their removal tool.
Who's fault is it for using trial software.
@@Akari_Reinhart Worked in IT for 35 years and for the vast majority of that time McAfee has been a raging dumpster fire. This "TH-camr" knows of what he speaks.
@@Akari_ReinhartMcAffee is junkware. It slows your computer to a crawl and doesn’t accomplish anything. Get rid of it.
@@EscapeMCPWhy are you putting "TH-camr" in quotation marks like this isn't a real channel and we're secretly on Bitchute or something?
@@andrewschliewe6392 its not anyones fault for falling for their marketing (aka paying sites to shill them) especally if they are less tech savvy
As a user of ESET for the last 8 years, having him nudge between A and S tier back and forth is a win for me
I've had it since back when they was Nod32 and the ever changing android 😂, its really nice change from like say Norton where, once you start a scan, you basically had to close down everything on the PC and leave it alone for a few hours, maybe even overnight to find out if there was anything on your PC.
Most times with ESET, I barely even realize its actively scanning for the 4th to 7th time that day, and only know when the little window pop-up says "we found nothing, keep on keeping on my dude 👍"
I remember using ESET/Nod32 back in the day and thinking I was using some elite government level software that 'hardly anyone knew of'. I was 14 at the time.... and hell, maybe the sentiment is still the same a little
@@cocodojo Hah, i remember doing that for scans.
Yea well this guy rates Webroot as S tier. So...
ESET NOD32 is the only paid antivirus that ever gave me a troublesome false positive. I spent many hours trying to clean the system during an important project. Their tech support response about the issue was useless and a bit rude.
hard to believe that ive used nothing but Kaspersky since 2007. I still remember when it was version 7. Part of the reason was because I managed to buy a tonne of leftover stock from a store that was going out of business and found a load of them still chilling at the back of the warehouse that had totally been forgotten. One of the greatest things about Kaspersky is keys from older versions will still activate for newer versions. There was a few years where they wouldnt allow this to happen but i think they rolled it back.
That's because it's a russian spyware. Never trust them.
Long time Trend user and have to say.. as long as they don't turn it off to access something that got a warning from trend.. have not had any systems get infected. And, once configured and folks told to click the do-not-show-again when offered the password manager.. it runs without dragging down the system and does the job without distraction. I like that it will give I think it's a weekly summary of trackers and bits it's blocked or dealt with for you and that's not too bad. I've usually been really happy it'd just dealt with things embedded in websites etc and didn't bother me about having to do so. Anyway, like the vid and your thoughts.. with my personal reservations re dumpstering Trend since I feel like they really are staying on-target and focused on their main business model.. Thanks for a good down to brass tacks video.. appreciate it.
My school used McAfee back in the day (not sure when, possibly around 2005)... until one day it had a bug or false positive or something that ended up deleting the NETWORK DRIVER on all laptops in the entire school. These laptops were connected to the Windows domain and had remote management enabled, but of course without networking, a fix couldn't be easily deployed. The poor IT guy had to manually go around with a USB stick to fix each individual laptop, which was something like 400-500 units. They swore off McAfee ever since.
Damm poor IT guy
IT getting that sweet OT!
Ouch! That IT guy has my sympathy.
That's an absolute nightmare
only 400? at my school im good with tech so when something like this happened i was going around plugging in a usb script for probably a thousand pcs over a few months
I worked stint at McAfee. Didn't meet a single person there who would put it on their own system. The whole stack is a dumpster fire. This rating is 100% on point.
All I've ever heard about McAfee for years and years at this point is how horrible their product is. Seriously, do you have any sense of how it's even possible for them to stay in business or attract computer security talent? Are their customers all just old people who can't remember why their credit card keeps getting billed? It's crazy how the McAfee zombie just keeps shambling on while so many startups with well-regarded interesting products fall over dead around it.
@@wfjhDUI The vast majority of PC users have no idea what they're doing, and McAfee (Also Norton) spend an awful lot on marketing and distribution, if you've ever seen someone buying a prebuilt you've probably seen that they come with one of those two packages. The average user then assumes that they are safe because of the marketing and don't bother changing it. Of course there will be a mark up in price for the AV, and the AV company is paid for bulk licenses. Part of the problem is that the prebuilt industry works on such low margins that they try to cut costs wherever possible, buying cheap AV could be the difference between profitable and not, and being able to advertise having a paid AV is good for sales. I don't know of a single tech minded person who would install one of them though, it's well known in the tech world how awful they are.
@@tjparkour24 I guess that does make sense or else companies wouldn't keep doing it but it's just so incomprehensible to me that there are actual real human beings walking among us who get a new computer overflowing with shovelware and just whip out their credit cards when it prompts them to.
@@tjparkour24 Bingo. Preinstalled on many machines.
Thank you for your honesty, I'm usually very skeptical of this kind of videos but you seem kinda trust worthy, maybe because you made it easy for me heheh.
Lately I've been cleaning my computer of crappy software that came with it and I wanted to know if I should install some antivirus for protection, but if the windows default one does its job so good, no need for extra protection I guess.
Oh man, EVERY single thing I shop for and look up actual review articles for... ARE ALWAYS ADS for the top product, or the budget one that outdoes the higher priced things. It's literally every product, service, software, hardware, everything. ALL the "best of" articles are bought and paid for the brand that's most featured. And inevitably the one they want to sell you. Even amazon reviews are better than these things, or searching whatever I want then "reddit" and I get actual stories from customers about them.
Back when I used Windows, it was AVG, Avast, or Avira and Malwarebytes to weed out rootkits.
Nowadays it looks pretty much the same, except the active antivirus now is Defender. Nice to see Malwarebytes is still useful for system scans.
Bleachbit's good too to use sometimes
Back in the mid 2010's, I had to completely wipe and reload several employee work computers with AVG on them. It was worthless at stopping ransomware that encrypted the files and wanted you to pay bit-coin to recover the files. Junk.
@@aytviewer2421i wouldnt assume it will "stop" an attack. It should and probably will detect any malicious files once you run a scan.
To be honest, i use more the Adware scanner than the antivirus itself. I still find it really cool
Thanks for rating Windows defender and Malwarebytes. McAffee and Norton being reduced to bloat-ware is no surprise to anyone who isn't high on copium these days.
Norton has had that reputation for as long as I can remember (at least two decades).
@@axi0matic yes. They did fall off in the earlier 2000's. Can't claim I was tech-savvy in the 90's, but back then norton was teh shit. You could put "naked woman" in the searchbar all day and never catch shit (or so I thought lmao)
At some point, both McAfee and Norton AV were the de-facto industry standard - back in the DOS days, McAfee Viruscan was THE antivirus to have, just as NortonAV was through the first few years of the Windows 95/98 era. Then the business became way too profitable, and here we are 🤣
unfortunately a lot of large companies still on them. Mine uses mcafee (uhh or trellix as they appear to be now..) , including its awful DLP feature that tanks the system even worse than the AV does.
"It's a problem between the chair and the keyboard" best line!😂
Where are you on Spybot S&D? Back in the day I would use the immunization feature along with nod32, but is it worth doing that these days?
As a Geek Squad Agent who has old people come in on a daily basis with Norton and McAfee, glad to know my feelings toward those two companies are valid. I’ve always told customers that Windows Defender is good enough and that Norton and McAfee are worse than actual viruses.
But you are wrong, Windows Defender is not good enough and Norton and McAfee aren't worse than viruses. Your poor customers.
(i'm just an ancient malware dev)
@@marvin.toyboy I also tell them Webroot is the way to go if they want an AV. So not really
@@marvin.toyboy what's good enough?
@@marvin.toyboyFound the influencer who gets insane kickback off of McAfee and Norton sales
@@marvin.toyboynot sure if i agree on the norton and mcafee parts but i used to write malware (for no malicious purposes of course) as well, can safely say: consider windows defender entirely obsolete for viruses that aren't world famous. reverse shells, desktop captures, file senders: damn thing does not care at all, just because its new. it only starts barking at it once its completely filled with features and one of them eventually gets recognized
I've heard it got better in windows 11, but haven't tested that yet
Finally, someone else sees McAfee and Norton for what they are. I thought I was alone. I've had them download viruses to my PC's when it was time to renew on both formats over the years. I built my first computer in 1996 and used McAfee, then my next in 2004-05 and used Norton. They worked well and gained my trust for years until probably mid 2010's.
Norton and McAffee basically are malware nowadays, they come pre-installed and getting rid of them is stupidly difficult. they'll also constantly spam you with pop-up ads for the paid version or "please renew subscription".
Most people who have actually worked with those AVs realize this. You aren’t alone by a long shot.
I feel like McAfee and Norton have had a (justified) bad rep since the early 2000's, never heard anyone talk about them in any positive light - especially from gamers, but in general, attentive people
McAfee and Norton are crap for at least 20 years now .. everybody with a bit of a clue does the best thing and deinstalls/deletes this crap from new PCs the instant they are booted :D
I honestly can't remember the last time I've heard anyone (besides obvious shills) say anything different about those two. And I'm talking for decades.
ive been using avast for a little bit (free version, im a bum) and i noticed where you put it in this list
i know absolutely nothing about this field so just a few questions and observations:
1) for me avast tends to redirect me away from "infected" websites more often than windows defender, just wondering, in terms of pure avoidance of bad sites and dodgy installs (ignoring annoyance of use, data leaks, etc) how does it compare to defender?
2) is it worth just getting rid of it and relying on defender, is it going to be more or less as effective?
your best bet is to install Ublock Origin in your browsers and do away with Avast, and use Windows Defender. Ublock will guard against shady sites. Actually your best bet is to stay away from dodgy sites (porn, piracy, etc), but if you're going to do that, Ublock (it's free) is a must, and really should be installed anyway. Tip: if you use Ublock, note that it can be disabled on a per site basis, and you should disable it for certain sites like your bank, utilities, etc
Im using Bitdefender Total Security on my workstation
is that enough for me?
I love that this is your honest opinion on this. There are so many shills out there, and when it comes to security, that is a bit of a scary thought...
i mean he didnt really trust kaspersky simply because they're russian,even tho they helped the us and russia catching their hackers
Windows Defender has worked great for me since windows 10. I haven't had any problems in years. I do run Malwarebytes to scan the system once in a while just to make sure nothing has slipped by. Remember Spybot Search & Destroy back in the day? LOL.
Spybot have an antivirus solution now! :D
@@nickalotdegit been using it for ages.. never had any issues.
That little spider was the best lol
The MB scanner that you use is the free version? It's good as it us ir you need to pay?
@@AthosJosueFree Malwarebytes with windows defender is all you need once you upgrade to Malwarebytes premium, MB premium is going to clash with windows defender and you will be forced to turn off windows defender and use only MB premium as your primary antivirus.
I've been wanting to replace Norton for a while now, but I haven't gotten around to doing the research on what to swap to, so this is very helpful to me.
Just removing it will help. Uninstall and use Windows Defender and you're better off.
@frommatorav1 funny enough, that's exactly what I ended up doing, and it's been going great thus far
I was given a brand-new laptop when I graduated and was getting ready to leave house.
Norton came pre-installed and I hated it. A couple weeks after I had everything set up I started getting constant notifications that "my computer had viruses and I needed to pay 29.99 to clean it" and other crap, including my computer running very slowly and pop-up notifications *everywhere.* Notifications were awful. It would pop up at random intervals as long apart as 5 minutes or as short as immediately after I x'ed out the previous notification. They also wouldn't leave on their own, I would have to stop whatever I was doing just to clear the ad.
Got fed up and spent an hour exterminating every bit of it from my computer with extreme predjudice.
I wouldn't piss on Norton if it was on fire. I'd throw more gasoline.
Another thing that has really rendered antivirus programs not quite as necessary nowadays is that the OSes themselves have been somewhat hardened over the years. Introduction of UAC for Windows, curated stores and package managers for installing software, hardened browsers, and more complete and timely auto updates have all gone a long way towards making antivirus software mostly obsolete.
Delusional if you think any of what U just said is true
Only agree with half of it, but for the opposite reason. AKA Windows Defender is as good as those free AVs back a decade ago that you don't need them anymore, and once you are dealing with those ones that WIndows Defender won't protect you against, most of the time you are dealing with State Sponsored Malware which almost no AV can protect against. I don't agree with the second part because of well, good ol' Dancing Pigs syndrome on most people. You can forget hardened browser because most people I see prefer to use Chrome with little to no modification.
One thing missing in your list is the rise of browser-based apps.
You're most likely talking about Windows S mode. Also by default UAC isn't much secure. And Windows doesn't use package managers, MS aint even package their software; lol
I think wannacry would disagree with you, or Petya.
Funny story time. My mom used to be absolutely terrified of not having a premium internet security suite. To be fair, the suite she used to have was one called Bullguard, which wasn't that bad. I've been telling her for literally years that she's wasting her money but parents are parents, and I've only been doing computer stuff for 20 years so what do I know? That very nice computer salesman at the shop suggested she use Bullguard and surely he knows what he's talking about!
Anyway, Bullguard got bought out by Norton. Consequently the old Bullguard Internet Security got updated into Norton Internet Security. Which is absolute trash with dog vomit on top. Horrible UI, horrible performance, everything about it just plain old sucks. And it just will not stop nagging about additional premium nonsense that my mother very obviously does not need. That nag, and the fact that it could not be turned off, was finally enough to let me convince my mom to not keep paying for a premium internet security suite.
So moral of the story, Norton Internet Security actually turned out very useful. I wouldn't have managed to convince my mom to save a bunch of money if NIS hadn't been quite that horrible.
Salesmen will always sell what they want to sell (either because of higher profit or wanting to clear the shelves). For few years I've been working as a PC technician in a PC shop. There were separate entry doors - one to the service station, other to the shop. The shop had a deal with one of the placebo AVs and most clients bought this AV in good faith. Some of them had their PCs on my desk (part of my job was to sanitize clients' PCs) and whenever they came to me with that placebo AV I always sent them back to the shop to buy a real AV (I told them which), not a placebo. For me my reputation (and as an extention the reputation of the place I worked at) was always worth more than some small short-term profit. My colleagues from the shop weren't happy, but those clients came back with friends and family for other products and services, so it was a long-term profit.
Yeah been trying to tell my dad to stop using Norton's, but he just won't do it. I think he got to invested in the eco system and is afraid to to not use it.
As my mom used to say "Even if you're terrible, you can always serve as a bad example!"
It isn´t just a parent thing. People buy and install antiviruses for the same reason people buy and install alarms in their home, to feel safe.
Security has always been a part of human nature, no matter how prepared you think you are you still feel the need and since viruses has become more advanced and harder to detect I can understand why people feel the need to buy antivirus.
Regarding Lightweight and resource usage.Would it make sense to go with Avast or anything else for free over WinDef?
I personally like Comodo antivirus/firewall. Super loud, but the "hey this thing is trying to connect to internet" popup offers way more security against malicious game updates and stuff like that. It stops random shit from running after its silently installed and has saved my ass couple of times when avast and karspersky just went "Well that's a legit data collection tool/ rootkit anti-cheat software seems fine to me."
Definitely not for casual users tho too many popups of stuff that you dunno what that is.
Now that ZoneAlarm and other classic Firewall software have turned to shit I also use Comodo, but only for its firewall. I don't know how good the AV is but the Firewall is excellent as long as I use custom rule set and set it to ask if a new program tries to access the internet. If I have even a hunch that some program is suspicious, tries to send some telemetry that I do not approve or tries to access internet even if it should not have to (IE single player game) it gets blocked on the spot. Good stuff!
It's actually getting harder and harder finding a firewall that *does* give you popups. I don't get it. I understand people don't like popups, but at least make them optional. Some of us would like to know when something is connecting to the internet, and decide whether we want to allow it or not...
@@Case_ MalwareBytes control for Windows Firewall is the same. You will get popup for everything. Steam updated? Popup. UWP system app updated. Popup. Firefox updated? Popup.
I used Comodo Internet Suite but is became too bloated. So I switched to Defender + W Firewall (with MalwareBytes Control).
I also use Comodo Firewall only but with a configuration variant called Cruelsister. This setup focuses on the containment portion of the firewall only. It has been effective for me. I tweak the settings so it suits my style more. It could be something to look into if you are not afraid of playing around with the application's settings.
The one thing I hate the most about Windows Defender is every time you update Windows or even just Defender itself gets updated, anything that I have put on the allow list is suddenly re-detected again, and I have to do it all over again. And often times, what I have allowed gets itself quarantined before I even realize it. It's just a pain in the ass. So anytime I have a client with Windows, who does a lot of things on the internet, the first thing I'll do is disable Windows Defender completely and install Webroot. It's been working well for me for five or six years now. Well, up until I switched to Linux. Now I don't run any antivirus.
the most dangerous malware for a system is the user itself, always has been and always will be
eh no, that totally depends
My standard practice with ESET was to enable thorough scans and automatically delete/fix detections as default for these users. Don't even give them the opportunity to pick the wrong choice!
I once got malware from Windows Update. I can't agree with that statement.
@@Mavendow I never said they were the only danger. You're generalizing a specific case.
@@sirmiyu I'd say that's true but every PC comes equipped with a backdoor the NSA can enter anytime.
Love the vid, any thoughts on a business/small enterprise antivirus software called crowdstrike?
Being in IT for decades I remember back in the 90's where you could go to stores like Office Depot etc. and access a download station to get up to date antivirus... at that time Mc Affee was the state of the art solution, not only in detection but especially in removing annoying stuff like Shirley. Nowadays I avoid McA and Norton since they can be considered bloatware. So happy to see my personal experience reflected in your Tier list.
Great video! Thanks and have another sub & like!
Love&Peace
Shen
Worth mentioning, Defender does have enterprise options for management/detection which can be handy if you're already invested in Microsoft's ecosystem (O326, Azure, SCCM, etc) called System Center Endpoint Protection.
Pain in the rear end to manage though... unless they've improved that.
O326 is probably Office 365, right? :))
@@moetocafe yes, lol. Thanks.
@@MrHav1kCan't speak to that. Don't have access to the console. I just get to deploy it via SCCM and respond anytime something between a chair and keyboard triggers it.
Defender has the same features as SCEP, therefore you don't need to install SCEP for Windows.
I'm glad to see you acknowledged the PEBKAC error. Personally, though, I'm in the "Defernder is good enough" camp.
Love this series! Can you please do VPN and passwords manager?
I used Norton back in the day, on an old laptop with a core duo and 1 gig if ram. It made it run so slowly that the computer would crash if you did so much as open three tabs in Firefox
I've been using Eset for almost a decade now, I think it was smart security 6 when I first got it. Not the best detection but very light, only recently I find it a little heavy perhaps because I've been working with more flash drives and other removable storage. Probably a reason why I have not used others since is because of my configurations to the software, tricky to setup but I believe it's worth the time. Great video!
Any of the "security" flavours are heavier than the standard NOD32 antivirus only. Nothing like Norton or Trend though where as soon as you load them your PC gains 10 years of age, and loses half its RAM. ESET VB100 awards have always been top notch so I would disagree with your comment about detection.
My personal experience, Eset is the best. It's the only one I've seen catching a lot BEFORE it infects the system. It works really well with stopping just about anything at the browser. I never worry about the scans because it just catches it before it gets there.
I 2nd your comment. ESET is the best!
agreed
Yep, same.
I wrote a main comment about this but Avast also manages to stop any infection before the payloads gets there, in the browser, without any extensions installed. It works great but uses a scummy business model.
Jip ESET is great!
I did a cybersecurity degree (in the US, fwiw) a couple of years ago and we put Windows Defender through its paces with a huge chunk of "mainstream" malware (no research, just for fun) and our results were on par with Chris' rating: pretty good. I personally don't use Windows as my main driver OS but have it there for some stuff and it was good to know that it was good enough for my use case (and maybe all use cases tbh). With that being said, I wish this video had some footnotes or at least verbal references that pointed to data that supported the tier list.
Comprehensive, clear, nice voice. I'm a complete noob with modern systems and this is very informative! That's a subscribe 4 sure!
Bitdefender does have central management (Bitdefender Central) So I have to question how you put Webroot (which you said had worse detection rates) above the others based on easier management.
likely he put as much emphasis on user friendliness and performance as detection rates.
Titus lost me on the Webroot pick. Maybe for home use with someone that only browses the internet its okay at best but I would recommend defender over it still. I've worked three IRs recently where Webroot was the AV of choice and all of the clients were ransomed, two of which were script kiddie/ransomware as a service. S1 was installed after the fact to help clean the environments and the amount of malicious processes/files/applications that S1 caught was staggering.
He did say to not trust any video or this one in the internet about antivirus. He said that even though other has a pretty bad experience with webroot, he had a pretty good one. which is most likely the reason.
Don't you man gravity zone as the central management?
ESET also has a central management... So ESET gets A tier, but Webroot, which he complained had an exploit (lmao) and worse detection rates, gets S tier? This doesn't make sense
Having a similar IT history as you I am surprised / not surprised my ranking is basically yours to a tee. Great advice and breakdowns across the board
Are these picks for Windows OS only or for all platforms like iOS, OS X, Android OS, and Linux distros? Thanks!
I used TotalAV for a while. Wondering if you have any thoughts on that one?
As you mentioned, the ID10T behind the keyboard clicking on links is our main problem. And that's with them only having User access accounts. I'd hate to see how bad it would be if they had admin rights which some businesses have done.
And can you actually catch anything by just clicking the links? Unless, of course, you are still using Internet Explorer...
@@getsideways7257 in theory yes, in practice no unless you are an extremely high value target or you have extremely old software, like for instance what you mentioned, iexplore.
I can tell my experience with Malwarebytes, it saved my 2 computers from malwares multiple times when i was a little boy clicking on ... questionable download buttons to play some older games... but i can definitely say one thing, once you know exactly what you're doing on the web, you don't really need an antivirus; altough i like to keep malwarebytes sleeping in the background until once a year i wake it up to make a system scan, that usually gives nothing out, just gotta be careful out there XD
Intersting video Chis, thanks. I'm curious if you have not already done so.. whats the best home made free suite for total protection? Ie; free antivirus and add a ..? what would that be?
My main problem with the one intergrated in windows is how many false positives it has. I constantly have to add exceptions for directories into list because it is trying to prevent me from running because it thinks they have viruses.
plus most viruses will disable windows antivirus
I started with Kaspersky back in the early days of Windows XP. I had been a Norton user but when I migrated to a 64-bit OS Norton, at that time, did not offer a 64-bit version. After doing my research Kaspersky was the best 64-bit app available at the time. I took note that it was a Russian company but... shoulder shrug. People I trusted reviewed it and gave it top marks.
Kaspersky has served me very well over the years. It operates seamlessly and transparently in the background, and I have never once had any issues with it. I'll be staying with Kaspersky.
the gaul of the NSA/US Govt to accuse Kaspersky of being FSB stooges is insane. Especially since the NSA created Stuxnet, Flame, Red October and a host of other viruses and then released them into the world. Kaspersky, found those infections and removed them. Guess we should ban Microsoft and just about every other American company because of alleged close ties with the NSA. Especially Cisco since it has been proven that exports of Cisco hardware tend to end up with NSA planted hardware bugs/backdoors in them prior to leaving the country.
duno why i ever moved away from kaspersky to be fair... i think I was getting it cheap for one reason or another and that stopped.
Back in the days I used Kaspersky trial edition and you could set back the windows clock date and extend the trial time 🤣🤣. Buying Kaspersky wasn't an option as a kid.
kaspersky is russian but everything outside of russia is being processed in switzerland so it's not a real problem for the rest of the world
@@xCwieCHRISx I think that went for few years, each year passed we just back date extra year. but I never tell my customer.
I like your honesty. I'm just not 100% sold on your list, nor the reasoning behind some of the reasons. Especially the placing of WebRoot.
Does this apply only for windows or for other OSs too?
Eset wasn't able to stop ransomware was the time I changed to Bitdefender.
If you're getting ransomware you're downloading some pretty suspicious things 😂
Good to see ESET is still on the top. I'm currently using it on my PC actually.
After ESET i didnt try anything else. It's quiet, relatively cheap, and it works. What do you want more?
I've been using ESET since 2008. No complaints 👍
Been in IT since 96. I agree. I use Webroot for my customers because its a good AV, has good management (does what I tell it), isn't chatty, & is VERY INEXPENSIVE but with about 230 computers on it I see about 1-2 viruses caught per year (worth having just for that). I also agree Sophos has slightly better detection but its far more expensive. For business use, most others aren't even options to me
We used to call Sophos SLOWPHOS because it would crater a pc with crappy performance. Our security team hated the name but agreed.
Windows Defender XDR is also a good fit for enterprises based on Azure and Entra and M365 due to its tight integration. It makes it hard to justify standing up a different management structure and console when there's one already built into the product you've sunk a chunk of change on already. My main irritation is that it's sidecar content filtering is based on machine, not on user, making it a bit of a chore to set up multiple profiles based on job role.
I used to use a antivirus a lot but not anymore. I feel confident on my computer skills and I have a great sense of security. From time to time I download an antivirus (usually Malwarebytes) to do a full scan just in case I missed something and uninstall it just after the scan.
I like how he just lay it out there in the end, "The problem is YOU." because it's so true. We as the user wouldn't even be infected in the first place if we really becareful in what we do. We're getting attacked from many ways now like through e-mails, calls, sms, etc. These kind of attack usually uses a method that will panic users like involving bank account, fines or tickets, and personal accounts issues. We need to always calm down, read everything properly, and always check whom and where was it sent from. Stay safe!
I'd say the most simple way we get scammed is downloading something from a "safe site" we damn well know it's not and even when we are warned we just click ignore and keep file and later we are hit with viruses 😂 some never learn
@@scarfaceReaper That's one of them I agree. Unless you know what you're doing and not gullible enough to simply trust random strangers on the internet (even if they're on your friends' account), always double check (or more even) before you click on something.
Having been a longtime Avast user because this was from the Vista era of computers, I'm not at all surprised to see it fall from grace, but all things considered I can't tell if having it on my current laptop is strictly because of old muscle memory clouding my judgement.
At least Malwarebytes is still getting good reps, which is nice, had to use that quite a bit to clean out my computers back in the day.
Used to have a Norton suite and moved away from them after your video. Using Windows Defender now and I periodically use antivirus launchers from a USB stick I created to do full scans. No issues so far. Others individual results may vary. Great video.
What's your opinion about Crowdstrike? I think our company started installing it on our systems a few years ago replacing McAfee. However, I don't have much information on it and why my company started trusting a relatively new company and the name feels like its protection is being "crowdsourced".
I have ESET Antivirus, never had an issue with its detection/background operation. I've also NEVER used free antivirus software because most have malware for advertisements in the background which opens up a different line of safety which is ironic considering the software it's being used through.
I'm a long time Kaspersky user and I think sometimes it doesn't get the recognition it deserves, it can be annoying sometimes as it detects even the slightest aware attempt, but at the same time it works great and doesn't slow down the computer
I was going for Kaspersky before getting Bitdefender.
Being Russian is a huge red flag for me.
Nothing against the company, but i don't trust Psychoputin not getting his hand in there if he wants to.
I using it since it available, once my company send me to Moscow to pickup Kaspersky blanks(we put current version before sale) and present for Mr.Kaspersky, I think it was most original birthday present for him from Ukraine and yes, i contraband CD blanks because Ukrainian customs want absurd money for empty CD. It was 1998 and I have very important task to do: sneak cd thru border and don’t comeback from Moscow without full cracked version of Half-life.
@@JustaGuy2.0 I do actually think that you as a customer has better protection against companies spying on you and 3 party spread of your information in Russia. People need to go to court to get your information and you must have a real case.
We all know that it isn't the case with Microsoft, Mac, Google and so forth.
@@JustaGuy2.0 You mean you do trust the liars in the media who tell you that? Trust me, he isnt the one who you need to worry about. Its the people telling you to think like that.
@@r200ti Really? REALLY?!?!? So the invasion of Ukraine and the killing and deportation is something normal to you? REALLY?!?!
Don't tell me that Putin is a nice guy and a hero and it's the west the monster that invaded Ukraine, and Zelensky, since he should just accept the losing of territory and independence.
REALLY?!?!?
Good honest review. I agree with most of it. Like your comments about the ones you pushed to the bottom.
Well thats my views also, and nice to see an honest review. Once upon a time AVG was the one to install at home but since MS took security seriously with defender I've never bothered with 3rd party ones. On linux I need to install AV for clients, however I am dictated to by the windows mindset and software. Recently we have been installing MDE on all systems so I guess in summary stick with MS since they do not want their reputation trashed and have been trying really hard to turn around their image from the XP days, where your machine would be infected before you had even logged in lol.
This video was great! I would love to see a tier list just like this for VPNs, because that industry feels very similar.
You can't really audit VPN providers in the same way as the core feature is a blackbox server that you can't test and don't have access to. Often they'd be considered good just because there hasn't been a public scandal yet which you typically learn about a year or two down the line. An antivirus you can at least test yourself in a VM environment, but there's no way of knowing how secure a VPN provider is or if it's storing or selling your data.
I guess you could test if geo-spoofing works at all, and compare pricing and network performance, but the whole security/privacy aspect is a big "Trust me, bro" and generally shouldn't be seen as more trustworthy than a generic ISP.
@@MunyuShizumiYou can also rate the level of imformation they require of you to be their customer, their payment options, etc
Your own VPN: S-tier
I had Norton for me and my dad as kind of a safety net. But every year it was the same scheme: suddenly my subscription was renewed for about a 100€ and only me haggling with their customer support would get me down to the usual 30€ / year. And I got tired of it.
My credit card recently expired and Norton's been bothering me that they can't auto-renew. Muhahahah! Sorry Norton, I'm leaving. 🙂
This is me. I get my 10 computer license for Avast for $30 after I don't renew lol
I know people don't like Avast, but it catches things for me (I don't necessarily pirate things, but I am a power user and do download a lot of handwritten tools for things, mods, etc, and once in a while it catches things that I download.
Tho after this video, I think I'll look into Eset.
I have Avast and it used to be so good, you used to be able to watch your speed performance. But now, it just seems that every game I play becomes super laggy and slow with Avast
You opened saying don’t get the suites, get to webroot and say both their detection rates are lower than the A tier AND you’ve used the suites for years, but ONLY the AV. This seems a tad duplicitous. Can you elaborate on what makes you go back to webroot considering Defender has better detection rates and just comes with Windows?
The best Antivirus : Common Senses
I've been using ESET (NOD32) AV for over 15 years and it has never let me down. I do agree it has gotten a little heavier since the early NOD32 days but there is nothing that would make me switch to anything else at this time.
I like F Secure
I hope you do not use a 15 years pc/laptop though
Is swapping default windows disc scanning service with one of another antivirus still a thing to get a better windows performance? I forgot the actual name of the process but I remember that eset32 had a better version of this than the default one in windows. (now we talking about win11)
The US Military (specifically the Navy, where I have experience) uses Mcafee. It's a massive pain in the butt to work around.
Webroot being "S-Tier" with the lower detection rates and the exploit is a joke
FR
From the antiviruses listed here, ESET is the one that gave me the best results and I do like to have it as a suit, I own a multidevice licence for ESET Internet Security which includes not only the antivirus "engine" but also a personal firewall which is quite useful being used in the interactive mode so you can have almost complete control about which apps communicate through internet without having to manualy set a bunch of rules on beforehand.
Same experience, it's very lightweight too
I've noticed the ESET firewall is also integrated with windows firewall so its very easy to preserve rules you have already setup in windows firewall, and very easy to unblock connections that are getting caught. It's almost one-click to allow say remote desktop through if you have already tried to connect to the machine and had it fail due to the firewall catching it. I rate ESET and have for many years.
McAfee just spams emails after u cancel too
i use norton 360 for gamers since my dad bought my pc for me and he pays for the antivirus, but is it really THAT bad??
I find Kaspersky amazing if you are into piracy. The detection ratio like you said is S tier, but also I hardly had any false positives with it. It does a really good job.
Helps filter out those dodgy RUtracker downloads :D
Always used Kaspersky back when I was on Windows
Domestic intelligence agencies don't like Kaspersky because they're usually the fastest at reacting to new malware tools they're using.
Definitely
kaspersky is malware
hey man love your videos. was a 24 year windows user until last year and I completely agree with your tierlist. so hats off on this one. can you please make a video on calm av and its current situation...definitely on a constructive perspective cause we all know its nowhere near there.
Norton came bundled with my sister's old PC and getting rid of that pest was a nightmare. Whenever we'd try to uninstall it the uninstaller would just hang forever and not do anything. Deleting the actual files themselves wouldn't do anything and it would just come right back. Norton itself would constantly popup and stay open. You couldn't even close it.
I've personally seen Windows Defender completely ignore several viruses, while MalwareBytes has always caught them before they can do any damage. Sorry, but I do believe Defender is substandard at early detections when compared with MB.
What I dislike about antivirus software is how they often hide or bundle their installation with another application's installer. The abundance of adware (though I'm not sure with this one) and unnecessary and constant notifications that come with them can be quite annoying. The last time I had an antivirus was probably eight years ago when I was more innocent about these things.
My mother in law, who is now easily confused had three or four paid antivirus and I blame the aggressive popups. Avast and avg definitely. I just make sure defender is running, same with work computers. I also make sure to only allow them local accounts, my predecessor had them all as admins and all had "the usual password". Stops them installing anything they like.
I really liked your tier list. Amazing that the ones I used and liked are on a par with Defender.
Hi..so question ,,,is there any need for an antivirus if u just use ur laptop for video editing? I use clipchamp which is already built in
If you have no personal information on it like credit card and social media, not really since its just for editing, is like using a car just to listen to the radio, you dont need a drivers license for it
I do cybersecurity and DFIR for a company. I don't have a lot of problems with this list. If you suspect you have an infection, it's a good rule to scan with something like Defender, then use a freebie from one of the other companies to do a second scan. Detections across AV platforms are not all created equally. If you're thinking business suite (which Chris touched on so very briefly) central management, endpoint isolation, and details on what is occurring on your endpoints is a must. Defender at that tier is one of the premium offerings, I've seen good things with Sophos in that venue. Cisco AMP, Crowdstrike, and Carbon Black are A tier. For a business though, I personally prefer Defender.
I did want to give a shout out to BitDefender as a company I've worked with in ransomware response. They provided some pro bono support in obtaining decryptors. Not something you see much these days and it's worth showing them some love.
"It's the problem between the chair and the keyboard" - Wisest sentence ever spoken on cybersec domain for a user
PEBKAC is one that’s always stuck with me since first hearing it.
Eset is what I used to push for Windows systems , I had dedicated server for doing their updates / management that all clients used to point to , then at some stage noticed how slow my Linux pc's were getting using it and dropped it at some stage
I remember having to fight tooth and nail with Norton during college, when its reputation service would flag the small little "Hello world" esque application that I had JUST COMPILED locally as "unsafe" because "very few" people had used it. So many exceptions for various a.exe paths from the code samples in my textbook...
It's been almost 10 years since I stopped using an antivirus, Windows Defender from Windows 8 always did a good work cleaning and detecting malwares (and honestly, most of the detections were cracks 😝), as you said, there's no reason to get infected if you know WHAT are you downloading or what website are you visiting. The last time my PC got infected was back in 2012 tbh.