What is the difference between antivirus software and an internet security suite? Well, antivirus software is more basic than internet security. But rather than make general statements about the differences between antivirus software and internet security suites, it might be instructive to compare the two best internet security suites in our review with their lower-priced antivirus counterparts.
Bitdefender Internet Security has every feature that Bitdefender Antivirus Plus contains and a few more. Both products are fast, unintrusive and Windows 8 compatible. Both of them block and remove viruses and spyware. Either of them checks any portable storage devices that you may attach to your PC to see if they are safe. You can use either one to conduct safe online transactions and secure social networking sessions. With either product, you can surf the internet without disclosing private information. And either one will let you give it the reins to make security-related decisions for you without popups that ask you to decide what to do.
Bitdefender Internet Security, however, adds parental control, cloud anti-spam, a two-way firewall and a file shredder. If you would like the ability to block inappropriate content when your children go online, control when they can be online and monitor their online activity from a remote location, you might prefer Bitdefender Internet Security to Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. And if you’d like the ability to delete a file in such a way that nobody (not even the CIA) could resurrect it, you will prefer Bitdefender Internet Security to Bitdefender Antivirus Plus.
Furthermore, the Internet Security version contains a Bitdefender firewall that works independently from the firewall in Microsoft Windows. The Kaspersky counterparts to these Bitdefender products and many other competitors show similar differences.
A strong competitor to Bitdefender Internet Security is Kaspersky Internet Security. Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Anti-Virus have more things in common than not. But the few additional features in Kaspersky Internet Security are quite attractive. Of course, both versions of Kaspersky detect, block and remove viruses, but you need Internet Security to take care of spam.
Both versions warn you about dangerous websites, but you need Internet Security to actually block dangerous URLs. Both of them provide a rescue disk, privacy cleaner and task manager, but Internet Security is the one you need if you want parental controls over when and how your children go online. Both products include a virtual keyboard so that you can enter passwords while online shopping or banking in such a way that keyloggers cannot detect your personal identity. However, only the Internet Security product includes its own firewall to protect your internet connection. Are you starting to detect a pattern?
If you examine every similar pair of products from the majority of competitors, you will find that the internet security versions and the antivirus versions perform exactly the same when it comes to detecting, blocking and removing malware. The internet security versions, however, often include parental controls as well as better antiphishing features and more security related to online shopping and banking. The differences in price are so negligible that it usually makes sense to step up to the internet security version rather than make do with the basic antivirus product.
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