There are many online threats to your computer. These include viruses and other malware including trojans and worms. Some of this is purely vandalistic, while much is done for criminal commercial gain, including spyware and downloaders. In order to protect your computer you need to have installed a software package to defeat the threats.

The main categories of software to consider are 1/ anti-virus 2/ genaral utilities, including anti-virus capability. An anti-virus package should be able to fix all attacks on your PC, including viruses, trojans and spyware. This task should only be entrusted to a recognised company, such as Norton, McAfee and AVG.

A second line of defence is always a good idea. Perhaps use a general utilities suite, with an anti-virus capability and a second specialist anti-virus package. For instance Norton Utilities or McAfee Internet Security Suite. Specialist anti-virus products include AVG or Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, both of which have free versions.

Anti-virus packages must have frequent updates, virtually daily to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the online community. If it does not update frequently it is no good.

Norton or McAfee , which include a whole suite of maintenance software to keep a computer free of problems, as well as anti-virus protection could be one option. This includes such things as cleanup software to remove superfluous files, defragmentation, one button checkup, registry maintenance, file backup and other utilities which are very important in the fight against malware. Some software such as anti-virus and cleanup tools help avoid problems arising, while others such as backup and disk restore enable recovery after a problem has been removed. This could be reinforced by a free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware or AVG’s anti-virus package.

Always keep your software solution under review. Use a paid version of anti-virus software as a second line of defence if necessary, but at the moment free versions are very good.

Keep up the housekeeping of your computing by regularly defragmenting the disk drives, tidying up the registries and cleaning unwanted files. Make a backup every few days. These tasks can be done at night or whenever the computer is not being used for anything else. Set them to come on automatically to minimize labour.

Do not forget to use your defences against the the constantly changing threats to your computer. Frequent application is essential, otherwise they are just an unused icon on your monitor screen.