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All anti-virus programs are not the same and making purchasing decisions based on opinions (not facts) could put you at risk.

So which anti-virus (AV) program is best for you? It really depends on who you talk to, but should it? Ever since the advent of anti-virus, debates have raged as to which program is best and most of the time you get plenty of subjective opinions. We all have our opinions, but believe it or not there is significant science to the evaluation of anti-virus programs.

NOTE: This article is written with desktop and server anti-virus in mind. Enterprise management i.e. McAfee ePO, Symantec Corporate Edition, et al. is outside of the scope of this article.

The Science
The science of evaluating anti-virus programs is based on two main criteria; features and effectiveness.

Features
The anti-virus software market is more competitive than it has ever been. Some vendors offer a plethora of features in their offerings to attract more customers. Most people don't even know what some of these features are or what they do, but there are some features that are important to look for during an evaluation of anti-virus programs.

OS Support
Does the anti-virus program fully support the operating system that it is intended to be used on? Sounds obvious don't it? It does, but take Windows Vista for instance. Has the anti-virus program been designed for Windows Vista and has the program been tested and/or certified on this platform?

Automatic Updates
Can updates be downloaded manually and/or automatically?

Most people have better things to do than to make sure that anti-virus programs are updated regularly. This is a "must have" for a good anti-virus program. An added benefit is configurable automatic updates, allowing updates on a specific schedule.

On-Access Scanning
This is another critical feature. The on-access scan engine needs to start as early in the boot process as possible and files must be checked the instant there is any interaction with them.

On-Demand Scan
Is there an option to conduct a "deep scan" of files, folder, or drives when needed? All good anti-virus programs have this feature, but it is important to mention as a requirement anyway. It is also important that the anti-virus program allows for the scanning of removable media and network drives.

Heuristics
Heuristics' describes the method of analyzing the code of a file to ascertain whether it contains code typical of a virus. Anti-virus programs that rely solely on signatures of known viruses are ineffective

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