Back on 3/7 my presentation covered malware, specifically Android malware.

I made a point in my presentation about computer security, and the ability for just about anything that’s network connected to get hacked. It seemed some were surprised that the concept of anti-virus software extended beyond windows computers. Just for reference, here are the Wikis that list malware for other machines:

• MacScan list (I don’t know/recommend these guys’ software though, maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not)
• Linux malware (Wikipedia) (Android is, at its core, derived from linux)

I made a point about ESET being the highest quality anti-virus software I know of (for windows at least). If one looks around on various review sites, you’ll find a lot of variations for any given month you check, but there are some fundamental differences that make ESET a quality player in the long run.

• They use assembly language to build some portions of their software, which is smaller, more efficient, and can allow for very effective optimizations in performance.
• Because they use assembly, the memory and CPU time consumed by their software is much less compared to just about any other anti-virus.
• Never mind the efficiency of the software, they use excellent heuristic algorithms to detect “in-the-wild” yet to be defined threats. This means that they don’t rely explicitly on some always dated database of virus signatures to detect threats.
• They have a simple GUI/user experience, which is less prone to bothering you with mundane/useless information and popups.

I can add a bit more personal experience to this though; I used to work for a small company that specialized in high-end computer repair services (sorry folks GeekSquad from Best Buy is hilariously incompetent with a lot of low paid staff), and we had a lot of experience with the various anti-virus solutions out there, but ESET easily trumped the big names like Norton/McAfee when it comes to the general user experience and overall quality.