“In the year then of our Lord, 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague …” The Decameron.
The computer plague of our time is malware. Malware is software intentionally designed to damage digital devices and their data. A wide variety of malware exists including viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, and scareware. It’s estimated that there are more than one billion malware programs lurking on the Internet. Security experts detect more than half a million new pieces of malware every day.
In light of this threat, you MUST install anti-malware software on any device running the Microsoft Windows, macOS or Android operating systems. The next post will cover iOS. Anti-malware software prevents, detects, and removes malicious software from your desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. And you MUST configure your anti-malware software to update its malware signatures regularly. Malware signatures are used to identify malicious software and their activities. Malware constantly changes and out-of-date anti-malware software will not protect you.
Most major malware products are U.S. based, and I’m sure they’re logging usage. All will have strong encryption and independent third party audit of their effectiveness. Some other essential features are:
- Comprehensive detection and removal of malware of all sorts.
- A host-based firewall that protects your devices by filtering network traffic and blocking outsiders from gaining unauthorized access to your devices and data. Firewalls can also prevent malicious software from reaching your device, defeating malicious software before it gets a chance to install and operate.
- An intrusion protection system (IPS) that continuously monitors network traffic entering and leaving your devices, watching for potentially suspicious traffic, and taking action to interrupt suspect traffic from continuing.
- Anti-spam protection integrated with your email. Spam is unsolicited and annoying email messages that try to lure you into buying something, sending money, or clicking on a link or attachment. Spam may be unwanted advertising. It may also be a scam.
- Anti-phishing protection with white-listing and black-listing support. Phishing emails attempt to trick you into revealing sensitive information like passwords, account numbers, or social security numbers. A whitelist identifies safe sites. A blacklist identifies known malicious sites.
- Multi-device support. Applications should be available for all common operating systems and devices.
- Free technical support if your device becomes infected with malware. This is a significant benefit. Malware can be quite difficult to remove once it’s burrowed into your system.
- A strong reputation in the marketplace with excellent customer support.
Many products provide malware protection within security suites that also offer a password manager, virtual private network (VPN) services, and cloud backup services. I rarely recommend these additional services. There are better options. Security suites may also offer dark web and credit monitoring services which, if available at no additional cost, are worth a look.
The next post reviews recommended security suites.
Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.