OS Heaven

With dozens of developers coming out with their own brand of security, choosing an antivirus program can be a challenge. Fortunately, the Internet isn’t short of amateurs and professionals publishing reviews and rankings of antivirus software. A quick look at these sites will show that several things matter when it comes to antivirus rankings, from user-friendliness to the level of protection they offer. Here are some of the most common criteria:

Level of protection

Antivirus companies have a dozen names to hint at their system’s coverage, from “multilayered” to the much bolder “100% protection.” The scope of protection refers to the types of threats a program works against. Ideally, a program will protect your computer from worms, viruses, spyware, and Trojans—all the usuals—but also from less common ones like e-mail threats and phishing scams.

Effectiveness

Besides protect from as broad a range of threats as possible, an antivirus program has to protect against each one effectively. Antivirus rankings refer to various industry standards, set by security organizations and testing companies, to gauge each program’s effectiveness. Often, the highest-ranking brands are also the most effective.

Setup, installation, and user-friendliness

A few minutes of installation is a small price to pay to protect your computer, but it shouldn’t be too much trouble either. An antivirus must start doing its job as soon as possible, and without being too taxing to the user. Not all users are experts, so the interface must be easy to navigate and the options easy to understand.

Basics and extras

Ranking experts look for basic features such as automatic updates, real-time scanning, scheduled and on-call scans, and scanning of emails and online downloads. The better and faster an antivirus program can do this, the better. But extras such as adware and malware protection, keylogger detection, and checking for vulnerabilities can also go a long way in antivirus rankings.

Update frequency

According to Top Ten Reviews, a software ranking website, in the security industry a program is only as good as its updates. Antivirus databases grow by the minute, so a program must know what to protect against at all times. Good antivirus software will check for updates at least every hour; some programs do so every five or fifteen minutes.

Support

Most people skip the software manual and get away with it, but antivirus developers must make one available just in case. In addition, they must have support personnel on hand to answer specific questions and provide extra support. This can be done through live chat, email, and phone—the more channels there are, the higher a program ranks.

Windows systems are notoriously more prone to virus attacks than Mac and Linux, its two biggest competitors. Indeed, in the past decade Microsoft has struggled to provide a security suite that could stamp out at least the most obvious threats to its system.  It was only in 2009 that a Microsoft virus protection software was released that could reasonably compete with well-known third-party providers.

Microsoft Security Essentials was released in September 2009 and has since received a number of upgrades. Public reception was mostly positive; a year after its first release the program had an estimated 30 million users. The stable release, Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0, followed in December 2010.

Unlike its predecessor, the subscription-based Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft Security Essentials comes free with all genuine copies of Windows XP (with Service Pack 2), Windows Vista, and Windows 7. And unlike Windows Defender, which protected only from adware and spyware, it provides full virus protection and network intrusion detection.

Despite its high scores from rating bodies and independent labs, Microsoft virus protection has a number of weaknesses that have led experts to rank it lower than other free programs. For instance, PC Mag notes that it offers lower protection in Windows XP and doesn’t do the best job of blocking and removing malware. Some threats were even found to keep running even after the program had claimed to remove it.

Reviewers agree that for its audience—households and small businesses—MSE does the job well enough. For a user who takes comfort in the Microsoft brand name, it’s definitely worth a look considering that it’s free. But other free antivirus programs shouldn’t be shrugged off. There are lots of other good ones in the market, many of them boasting better reviews than the in-house product. Some of the highest-ranked programs are Avira, AVG, Panda Cloud, Avast Home Edition, and Comodo Internet Security.

There’s also something to be said about paid antivirus protection. In a joint study with security testing company AV-Test, PC World found that while free programs will shield against the biggest and most obvious threats, paid programs offer more comprehensive tools such as parental control and faster startup times (usually because free programs have ads worked into the interface). Some companies also claim that their free programs are for “average users” and paid ones are designed for “advanced users,” a pretty vague definition. So depending on your needs, a good Microsoft virus protection program may be a good investment, although a free one can give you just as much.

The music industry can claim to have taken the first plunge into cloud computing. Companies like CloudSound and Mp3Tunes (from the original founders of Mp3.com) were offering online storage and access to music collections long before magazines dubbed 2011 the year of cloud computing. But they may be right on target: the technology is being picked up by more and more businesses, from small start-ups to large corporations. And with mobile business also taking off, it’s a long, lucrative road ahead for today’s cloud services providers.

Take the Palo Alto-based service Box.net, founded in 2005, which allows workers to create, share, and edit files in an online platform. This year it is set to announce a partnership with Google, whose Google Docs service is widely popular as a collaborative work environment. The team-up will boost Box.net’s offering into a more comprehensive office suite, and push it several notches above its rival Dropbox.

Mergers like these have the power to make desktop computing a thing of the past, says Box.net CEO Aaron Levie. All one has to do is pick up any device with an Internet connection (like a laptop or a smartphone), log in to a cloud service account, and start working. Workers will no longer be tied to a desk or an office, and companies can be run from homes and offices across the continents.

Competition will be inevitable, albeit with different players. Google and Apple are the strongest rivals in the entertainment market, with the latter hyping up its iCloud service as the next big thing in digital media. In business, younger and smaller companies are fighting for attention. Dropbox, introduced in 2008, now has 25 million users despite its barely month-old stable release. Microsoft is slated to bring its own cloud service, Office 365, out of beta in the next few weeks.

Office 365 will first be available on a subscription basis (about $6 per month), unlike Google Docs and Dropbox, which offer free versions. It lags behind Box.net’s 6-million-strong client base, but its huge market share—some 750 million users around the world—should work in its favor. Users will also appreciate the familiar working environment, and the fact that it can import both Word files and Google documents.

Security is probably the biggest hurdle to cloud computing. Storing songs and videos online is one thing, but office documentation is another. Businesses that routinely pass around delicate information, such as credit card data, may have a harder time making the switch to cloud-based environments. But the fierce competition can only serve to make companies step up their game and secure their services, and experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before they build public trust.

For the longest time, most Mac users scoffed at the thought of malware protection, confident that their OS could catch any bug thrown their way. And they had good reason to think so: the number of Mac malware attacks is negligible next to the almost routine infections on PCs.

Recent events have proven that Mac malware is no myth, however. Windows has always been hackers’ favorite target because of its market share. But with Apple having caught up in recent months, we can’t afford to assume no one will ever make Mac malware.

Indeed, Apple itself has taken pains to admit that their machines aren’t invincible. Buried within the OS X legalese is a small disclaimer claiming the system “isn’t impervious to attacks,” and reminding users to run an antivirus if they find anything suspicious.

Most Mac systems are inherently very secure, and a careful user can dodge most attacks without an antivirus. The weakness is usually in the updates, according to most experts. The Snow Leopard system, for example, has a built-in malware protector but often uses months-old databases. That’s a wide-open door for a motivated hacker.

One of the most prominent threats to rise in recent years is MacDefender, a fake antivirus that appears when an infected link is clicked. The interface, also used for MacSecurity and MacProtector, the program’s variants, looks uncannily like a real antivirus program. Fake apps and utilities, such as movie makers, make use of the same tricks.

Windows’s popularity will make it the primary target for a good while still, so Mac users can breathe easy for at least a couple more years, according to experts. But it’s never too early to start taking steps. Besides malware, it’s also important to protect against spyware, trojans, worms and viruses—all names for small programs that latch themselves onto your system and attempt to steal personal information. The effects can be merely annoying, such as spam in your inbox, or utterly destructive, such as credit card fraud and identity theft.

Luckily, many protections for Mac are free, and fairly reliable. Sophos, the world’s top developer of security programs, offers a free antivirus for Mac that can run in the background, performing real-time scans and catching bugs as they come. It can also scan networked drives, which is rare even for some paid programs. Kaspersky for Mac and ESET CyberSecurity are also highly recommended, although they come with annual fees.

Fresh out of a sick leave, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is set to unveil a new operating system at a developers’ conference next week. The OS, dubbed “Lion,” will be revealed alongside iOS 5, the new version of the mobile OS powering the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. Also in the lineup is iCloud, Apple’s answer to the cloud computing industry currently dominated by Google and Microsoft.

Lion will be the eighth version released of Mac OS X, which has been included in all Apple computers since 2002. Its predecessor, the Snow Leopard, was released in June 2009. Lion will be shown at the opening of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs from June 6 to 10.

The conference will center on Apple’s latest developments in the Mac OS X and iOS systems. It will also feature more than 1,000 of the company’s engineers, who will be running hands-on labs and technical sessions to show developers how to make the most of Apple’s operating systems.

Jobs has just returned from his third highly publicized sick leave in the last few years, following a pancreatic cancer operation in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009. These haven’t deterred him from business and public appearances; just this year, he made a surprise appearance at an iPad 2 launch in San Francisco.

The Lion OS will combine the power of the Mac OS X with the portability and ease of use of the iPad, according to Apple. It is scheduled for release in summer 2011, although previews were already released in last October’s “Back to the Mac” event. A developer’s version was also released to members of the company’s developer program last February.

Features will include a Mac App Store, where users can access a huge collection of apps from over 90 countries, and Launchpad, which lets them pull up installed apps instantly, as the iPad does. Apps can also be viewed on a full screen without distracting from other tasks, and while allowing for easy navigation between apps. A new feature called Mission Control lets users see everything that’s running on the computer at a glance.

The new OS boasts an “aqua” theme, which includes overlay scrollbars, popovers, and various animations that make for a more iPad-like experience. Road warriors will also appreciate the safety features, which include auto-save, resumption of app activities, and sandboxing, which keeps apps from disrupting network and local activity.