Sluggish Security Suites are Still a Turn-off

Stewart Mitchell finds that the performance and intrusive design of security software is once again becoming a cause for concern for trigger-happy users

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The days of security suites hogging your computer resources were supposed to be over. However,the databases required to tackle the hundreds of thousands of new threats that emerge every day are once again having a detrimental effect on PC performance, prompting frustrated users to compromise their own security by switching it off.

One in ten gamers admits to disabling security software to improve performance, according to research by security company Kaspersky Lab, exposing themselves to network threats and malware infection. “It might be that people are tempted to turn off the heuristic detection or some other proactive protection and that is dangerous; with our product, around 60% of our detections are done proactively and aren’t dependent on signatures,” said David Emm, principal security researcher at Kaspersky.

Emm insists that people are disabling security software as a result of its past performance. “AV and security software has had a reputation for affecting the general performance of the computer,” said Emm. “People think: ‘antivirus might slow down my computer, so I’ll disable it before I start’.”

Our investigation suggests that security software’s effect on PC performance is no figment of the imagination.

Feeling the pinch