What is the best antivirus program?
None! Different products are more or less appropriate in different situations, but in general you should build a cost-effective *strategy* based on multiple layers of defense. There are three main kinds of antivirus software, plus several other means of protection, such as hardware write-protect methods (see D4). When planning your antivirus strategy you should also look closely at your backup policies and procedures (see 10). 1. ACTIVITY MONITORING programs. These try to prevent infection before it happens by looking for virus-like activity, such as attempts to write to another executable, reformat the disk, etc. An alternative term is BEHAVIOR BLOCKER. Examples: SECURE and FluShot+ (PC), and GateKeeper (Macintosh). These programs are considered the weakest line of defense against viruses on a system that does not have memory protection, because in such an environment it is possible for a tunnelling virus (see B12) to bypass or disable them. 2. SCANNERS. Most look for known viruses by
