When it comes to protecting your company, employees, and customers from the growing number of threats posed by evolving technologies, nothing is more important than reliable antivirus software. Even if your company stays within the safer boundaries of selling office equipment and taking online orders, you can never be too careful when it comes to cyber security. After all, a virus can wipe out an entire company’s worth of data in a matter of minutes.
While there are free antivirus solutions available, business owners and managers should weigh the cost/benefit ratios to decide whether they are viable options for their companies. Some of the more popular free antivirus solutions are Microsoft Security Essie, MacAfee Secure, FSecure Anti Virus, and Avast Online Security. All of these solutions are reputable and provide good value for whatever device or network they are installed on. But nothing can replace the robustness and reliability of a paid solution, especially when you consider that they also offer online support via phone, email, and ticketing systems.
Why Should You Select A Paid Solution?
When you invest in a reliable antivirus solution, you are not only securing your device but also the data that is stored on it. This data could be anything from marketing and sales information to product recipes and customer order details. Protecting this data with good-quality antivirus software is essential to maintaining a competitive edge in today’s ever-evolving global marketplace.
Paid antivirus solutions are also good for bigger businesses. Although your free solutions may be robust enough to protect your organization’s most important data, you should consider investing in something bigger and better to ensure that vital business processes stay safe and sound.
Another important factor to consider when selecting a paid antivirus solution is the level of support that you will receive from the vendor. In today’s world, no one company can possibly provide a 24/7 phone support line for every market segment it serves. So, even if you are a large enterprise with a global presence, you must weigh the cost/benefit of support contracts vs. a fully standalone solution. If you decide that the former is more viable, you should go for it but you should also plan to upgrade your service level at some point.
How Much Should You Spend On Antivirus?
The answer to this question depends on a variety of factors: how many devices do you have connecting to the Internet, how important is business data, how much control do you have over the devices, and how advanced a state of security do you require?
One general rule of thumb is to spend between 2% and 3% of your annual IT budget on security solutions and technology upgrades. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this figure might be a little higher (around 4% or 5%). But the truth is that no amount of money can ever be considered ‘too much’ when it comes to cybersecurity.
The more you spend, the more you gain. This is particularly important for businesses looking to evolve their cybersecurity posture because the solutions and technologies that become available as you spend more money typically provide more robust security than the cheaper solutions. This being said, you should not overspend simply to improve your IT security because, at some point, a decent antivirus software package will cost you less than the performance of your inefficient antivirus software and systems.
For those looking for a free solution, the general rule is to spend between $5 and $10 per device per month (depending on the device). This may not sound like a lot, but as you add up all the small and large devices that your organization uses, it starts to add up (a little over $1000 per year).
To put this into perspective, consider that around 80% of all cyber crimes are committed by employees who act foolishly or maliciously while using their work devices. These employees may not have the best intentions but they can still cause plenty of damage without meaning to (for example, by downloading a virus, keystroke logger, or ransomware onto your company’s laptop or desktop computer).
What To Look Forward To
One of the biggest plusses of having a reliable antivirus solution is what happens when you get a new device or network appliance that you need to protect. As long as your device or network is not infected, you will not have to worry about the virus propagating to other devices on your network or leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. You can simply install the antivirus software, follow the instructions, and you will be back in business in no time.
This is a critical point that cannot be overstated enough: once you get rid of the virus, the effort and time that went into containing it and removing it from your network and devices gives you a sense of peace and comfort that is invaluable.
Another significant benefit of going the paid route is what happens when you need support. If you are not familiar, the last thing that you want when you are under the gun is for your network to collapse because of a hacker attack or malware infection. When this happens, you will need someone with technical expertise to come along and help you figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. This sort of situation is both frustrating and costly because it means that you either have to pay for the assistance out of your own budget or you have to wait until the problem is fixed. If you wait, you could lose a good portion of your staff’s productivity while the network is being repaired.
So, instead of having to worry about whether your network can withstand a serious virus attack or not, you can simply purchase and install antivirus software on all the devices that you need. When this happens, your network becomes extremely resilient because even if one of your employees’ devices is infected with malware or a virus, it will not hurt the rest of the network (provided that all the devices are updated with the latest patches and security fixes).
In these cases, you will also notice a dramatic reduction in the average time that it takes to restore network and organizational productivity. This is because good antivirus software can scan, detect, remove, and quarantine malware and viruses quickly and efficiently. As a result, your employees will not have to spend as much time repairing the damage that bad software or malware might do to their devices and data. So, in summary, having good antivirus software can dramatically improve the productivity of your employees while also reducing the amount of downtime that you experience because of network problems caused by malware or viruses.
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