The Importance of Quality Anti-Malware Software

There are many common excuses for not installing anti-virus software on your computer. Here are a few: I am careful, I have a Mac/Linux computer, I back everything up to a USB hard drive.

You can never avoid all attempted attacks on your computer – They can come from many sources including ads embedded in popular web sites, social media, email, public wireless networks and even directly from the internet.

The consequences of being hacked include damage to your operating system which can render your system unable to start, theft of your personal or business information and use of your computer to hack other systems in your business or home. One popular attack is called ransomware, where this bad actor tricks you into installing their software on your computer which then encrypts your hard drives. They will then ask you to pay for them to de-crypt your computer. When you pay, they usually just leave you high and dry.

The breed of software designed to protect you from these attacks is called anti-malware. It will protect you by having a database of known bad software signatures to block, while looking for behavior on your system that would indicate something is trying to harm your system and proactively blocking it.

We recommend staying away from open source and free solutions. You get what you pay for and it costs money to have an expert team working to stay ahead of new threats!