Antivirus malware

Avast free was rated Number 1 a couple of Years ago by Pcworld Magazine.

I use spybot-search and destroy, malwarebytes, MS security essentials, OSSEC-HIDS client on all internal machines and a custom rolled firewall at the border of my personal network. Beyond that is a hardware VPN provided by my employer which connects directly to my cable modem.

Systems with sensitive information cannot be connected to or connect to the outside except through tightly controlled tunneling.

There are other systems in place, various active response services, packet inspection and the like.

If some system internally were to become compromised the most likely avenue would be drive by installer/malware coming into a client machine via browser. it would have several more hurdles to get into any systems with anything useful, and have to evade a lot of security software that most malware authors don't have to worry about so they don't even try to evade.

That's roughly what I do, however this is not for everyone ;-)

EDIT: forgot to mention, monthly audits as well. Employer takes security seriously...

Best paid av/firewall is Kaspersky, but they've had issues configuring for win10 because there's so much spyware built into the OS.

I use Zonealarm av/firewall (free), which uses the kaspersly virus engine, and works very well with win 8.1. I like avg (free) but it didn't want to work with win 8.1.

Most configurable av/firewall is Commodo, but they also had issues with win 8.1, for me at least.

I also agree that the built-in windows firewall does a decent job IF IF IF you configure it painstakingly. My issue is that I've learned not to trust MSFT with wirewall security.

i have avast, i ran the free version for a long time, and upgraded to the paid version a few months ago