With cyberattacks saturating the Internet, a dramatic shift is underway in the $7 billion-a-year anti-virus industry — and it’s all good news for consumers.
There’s no excuse anymore not to have anti-virus protection on your PC. You can get basic free protection from Microsoft with few hassles. Or you can opt for more robust protection — also at no cost — from a half-dozen reputable anti-virus makers. You need only endure marketing pitches to upgrade to their respective flagship products.
Spend a few pennies a day and you can step up to a very powerful anti-virus suite, available from a slew of established software security companies. Spurred by the rise of no-cost alternatives, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and others are revving up their AV software suites, making them stronger, smarter and less demanding of your PC’s resources.
“We’re seeing a wonderful thing,” says Jay Foley, executive director of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center. “More companies are coming out with free software, and at the same time the established players are coming out with more vibrant products that give the home user or small-business owner greater protections.”
No-cost basic protection is fast catching on. A recent Morgan Stanley survey of 2,500 U.S. consumers showed 46% of the respondents used free anti-virus products. This trend is expected to continue as more frugal-minded consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world recognize the need to protect their Internet-connected PCs.
Over time, this trend seems sure to dampen cybercriminals’ ready access to PCs that have no protection at all, cybersecurity experts say. Today, an estimated 40 percent to 60 percent of PCs go unprotected. These are the easiest fresh machines for cybergangs to infect, steal data from and use to carry out online scams.
“The immediate benefit of free consumer offerings is that more network-connected machines worldwide are…