Putting the finger on Anti Virus & Suites

When I uninstall AVs & ISS it seems like a weight lifts off the PC. Surfing seemed to be quicker, the PC a bit more responsive. Can we measure this? e.g. we measure re-boot time with scripts like bootracer etc. We have hard evidence how long a reboot takes. We know the time for 'with AV reboot' vs. 'w/out AV reboot'.

But what about AV & IS slowing us down in other areas? Can we measure say, how long to open a website with/without AV or do we just feel yea or nay?

 

Passmark and AV-Comparatives have published reports with various tests and how much security solutions slow operations down.

http://www.passmark.com/benchmark-reports/index.htm

http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/performance-tests

 

That's partly why a lot of people opt for non-AV solutions these days. An AV or suite often does take a toll on the system. Some don't however, so the best way to find one is to try them until you find one that's good on your setup.

 

don't take as much toll as being just a little careless with no protection installed,besides how fast do most users need a home PC to be?unless you're a mad keen gamer speed isn't that much of an issue surely

 

No argument there, I personally use one myself... I find it the easiest solution, although not perfect by any means.

 

What other security measures do you have in place?

 

OK , I'll mention Sandboxie. There now it's done.

 

even sandboxie has a slight performance hit!

 

Best you can do is custom DNS, and Windows built-in security (LUA, SRP, etc.)

Very little, if any, performance hit. Virtualization programs are next in terms of resource efficiency.

 

Virtulisation is by far best from safety point of view for a home user with lua and you can start having PC thats more like one of the checkout till at the local superstore and srp will only be secure until the remote server is hacked,but then again eventually everything becomes insecure to an extent,its only a matter of time!Being ultra pessimistic I suppose best thing is to always keep a clean image to hand

 

got to disagree with steve there


daily full disk imaging is the most secure and the best performing security solution, ZERO performance loss with GUARANTEED recovery from malware. can anything beat that combo?

i do daily imaging and weekly scans/critical point checks, and am loving it

 

you didn't read to the end of my post??I was talking of the options mentioned!

 

daily imaging ? doesnt that decrease the life of hdd ?

 

I want to ask you something, how can I measure the HDD I/O Reads/Writes of a particular AV/IS(or any other process).
Are there any test on the internet?
You can also post your personal testing results if you have some.

 

how the hell did i miss that?? my apologies!

 

no, traditional HDD's are pretty much immune to writes/reads cycles. SSD's are much more sensitive but i have not had a problem with mine yet (had them for a couple years)

 

Disk imaging is a great option as well, but its resource efficiency cannot be compared against Windows policies and virtualization.

 

Touche.

 

never tried that, but you are asking for a performance profiler, maybe process explorer/monitor?