Anti-Virus for Small Business

Are you protected?

Is there a contagious infection running riot round your business?

Did you know that viruses are one of the biggest killers in the UK today? Not of humans but of computers. You may be thinking that this is not serious but you’d be wrong.

The damage caused by viruses can cost businesses lots of money, not just in the downtime resulting from a virus attack, but also from loss of data.

Not all viruses are the same. They are designed to attack different areas of your computer and spread themselves in different ways. The most common are hidden in emails or email attachments (usually Excel) but you can also get them from browsing on the internet. However the virus ends up on your PC the affects can be devastating as the virus is designed so that it infects not only you but potentially everyone in your email address book or the people you are sharing files with.

What can a virus do?

Viruses can range from the slightly irritating to total destruction. I wish I was exaggerating but people underestimate the damage a virus can do, not just to one PC but to a whole business. Viruses have been known to delete the hard drive of your computer like Blackmal or Michelangelo. Both of these viruses were released some time ago and are now fixed or eradicated by security software. Viruses can also bring down your email and can copy all the keystrokes you make on your keyboard. This information is then used to gain passwords for everything you’ve accessed on your computer including internet banking. It is estimated that thousands of new viruses are sent out every day and with those figures raising the threat to your business is considerable.

What is the solution?

The solution is simple you need to install a good antivirus package. Not all antivirus products are the same some can be very hungry for memory and if you have an older PC can really slow it down. You need to check for the following things when purchasing antivirus software:

Can the software run updates every hour?
Do the updates run in the background?
Do the updates run automatically or is there something manual you need to do.
How much memory is this application going to need to run on my computer?
The last thing is what version is it. There are differences between a home version and a business version. You need to ensure that you are using the correct version for your business needs.

Where do I Start?

If you have no idea where to start on the quest to find the right software for you, one of the best software packages we have come across is Softwin's BitDefender. They are constantly one of the Top Ten products that are recommended by the various industry magazines. Eset's NOD32 is also a comparable product of choice for Small Businesses as Eset recieved their 42nd award in Feb 2007 from Virus Bulletin. Virus Bulletin is the worlds leading authority on virus recognition, detection and removal and has continously tested all antivirus products since 1998. If you would like to look for yourself and do a bit of research try typing "compare antivirus" into your search engine and that should bring several sites that will compare the top results for you like:

We have included a summary of these reports below:

What the professionals say about BitDefender & NOD32

Tony Bradley - PC World - BitDefender
“BitDefender Standard is inexpensive, easy to use, and effective at detecting malware threats; as a result, it earned PC World's Best Buy distinction in "The New Virus Fighters" roundup of ten antivirus products.
Top-ranked in our performance tests, BitDefender achieved the best scores in our heuristics tests--detecting 43 percent of worms and 57 percent of backdoor programs using one-month-old virus data and 18 percent of worms and 42 percent of backdoors using two-month-old virus data. It also earned top-notch scores in our zoo tests, catching more than 93 percent of the backdoors, bots, and Trojan horses.”