In A survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab and O+K, a Russian research firm, says that 95 percent of desktop computers and 92 percent of the laptop worldwide are protected from malware and other threats. However, how effective these security solutions are is a big question.
As per the survey, 69 percent of users did not pay for the anti-virus software installed on their computers. They have installed free anti-virus solutions, easily available in the market, having limited functionality.
Commercial solutions, meanwhile, offer a very different set of choices as the developers are focused on comprehensive products which include a fire wall, anti-spam and anti-phishing filters. These modules are seldom seen in free solutions, which provide real security during common user activities: visiting web sites, communicating on social networking sites and performing online financial operations.
Interestingly, 22 percent of respondents believe that the existence of free anti-virus software is the result of the developers social responsibility. 31 percent of the surveyed believe that free software is kind of platform that developers use to promote their top-level commercial products.
During the survey the O+K Research specialists also tried to determine how often the respondents used preinstalled protection software. It turned out that 60 percent of surveyed got a trial version of an anti-virus program along with their computer or laptop. Of them, 13 percent of them continued using it after the trial period was over, while 30 percent of the users eventually switched to another solution. Ironically, 2 percent of the respondents took no steps after the trial period was over and left their computers unprotected.
The cost of the most effective security solutions is relatively small. In addition, commercial software developers offer a number of money-saving deals. Paid-for solutions surpass their free counterparts both in quality (which is confirmed by independent tests) and functionality. The ever-increasing number of threats makes it necessary to provide reliable multilevel protection to the users most important data, and that requires the use of complex technologies.
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