The perceived wisdom is that you should have antivirus software installed on your PC and some app on your mobile device. Or it certainly is the case historically: if you haven't, the argument has always been that you're at great risk. However, given the progress of operating systems and security in general, is that still the case in 2020? Should you definitely be using antivirus software today? Or are there good reasons why you might not want to?
Arguments against antivirus
The short answer to the main question is: Yes, you should still be running some form of antivirus software in 2020. It may even seem obvious that any PC user should be running antivirus on Windows 10, but there are arguments against making that. In some cases, they are not particularly valid, at least in our opinion, but they exist nonetheless. A main pillar of the “antivirus mentality”, so to speak, is that if you are careful and careful enough about what you do online, only visit legitimate websites, official software stores and look for links. Clicking with the proper level of vigilance, you're unlikely to find any malware anyway. So the argument is that you don't need to pay for an antivirus, and even if you install a free 2020rd party antivirus app, it's still another program on your system that might slow it down a bit (some antivirus software can have a bigger impact on system performance and of course freeware can also display ads etc.). Another more pressing concern expressed of late is that some antivirus software has a number of vulnerabilities, and these could be a potential avenue for an attacker to exploit. In other words, the potential irony is that your antivirus software could be a way to compromise your machine. This is a legitimate concern, as we've seen of late, for example, in March XNUMX, Avast disabled a large portion of its antivirus software that suffered from a dangerous vulnerability reported by a respected security researcher. So, as you can see, there are gray areas in answering the question of whether you should run an antivirus. However, there are much stronger reasons why you should use antivirus, which we'll explore below.
Antivirus for victory
Obviously, the most concerning issue raised in the previous section is the last point, so it's worth noting that the chances of your antivirus being used as a means of attack one way or another are very slim. In truth, there are far more important targets for malicious actors than any given security application. We're talking about loopholes in much more widely used operating systems and software, like web browsers, that will be much juicier propositions for hackers and other criminals to exploit. The fact is that these are the main targets that are the real payoff for malware creators, and an antivirus can defend you against these far more dangerous threats. So really, the good that these apps do in this regard far outweighs any potential harm in terms of potential security flaws in the antivirus itself. It's as simple as that, but also keep in mind that to minimize any risk, use one of the best applications available, which are software that has strong and secure coding. Moving on to examine the possible slowdown that could be visited on your PC by installing an antivirus, the trick here is to check our antivirus reviews to discover lean applications that have little impact on system performance - there are very streamlined products. (like Norton and Kaspersky, for example).
![La seguridad antivirus es importante]()
(Image credit: Shutterstock) As for the argument that paying attention to what you download and click on is enough to protect you, well, that's largely true, but here's the rub: even if you're informed and super confident , there is always a small chance that you can become a farmer if you are online without any protection. Even reputable legitimate websites can unwittingly become vehicles for malware through the ads they run, if the ad networks they partner with are compromised (this has happened to some high-profile sites in the past). So it's a pretty dangerous assumption to make everything you need to have safe browsing habits and other good practices. Also, less tech-savvy users may not be sure how to stay safe online anyway, so it would be highly inadvisable without antivirus protection. And for those who don't want to go to the effort of searching and trying to find the best antivirus available, at least on Windows 10 PCs, you're already protected by default through Windows Defender. And today, Windows Defender offers a perfectly acceptable level of protection to survive. The last major reason why you should use an antivirus app is the dangerous nature of threats out there today, with, for example, nasty strains of ransomware that threaten to lock down your entire digital life, or stealthy crypto malware. extraction slows down your PC when you don't even notice it.
Is antivirus software needed in 2020?
Yes, in a nutshell. In truth, there is no compelling reason to go without antivirus protection today, although there are valid concerns about the security of certain antivirus applications. Just make sure you choose a good antivirus solution, keeping in mind the factors we discussed above, because you're going to need it, especially in 2020 as the threat landscape has become such a dangerous place. The best prices on today's best antivirus software