It’s a challenging world for most of us, and while I hope you’re all kicking goals and are generally winning, it’s the annual time here at APC Magazine when we spare a thought for another group facing its own massive challenge – being the companies making and selling security suite software. Yes, these battlers have been doing it tough for several years now. Ever since the free Windows Defender got really good, the reasons we little consumers should pay up for a full suite are fewer.
But not zero! As with all evolutionary systems, the security suite people have risen to the challenge. Now it’s less about simply protecting against viruses and malware and all its evil variants, because frankly they all do a great job of that – the race is now on to give you a wealth of security-related features bundled in.
The actual business of halting malware and viruses is good enough with any of these products, and as expected Windows Defender has once again proved itself very effective at this basic task. But the real appeal of these paid options is just how much they bundle into the main product. You can expect a decent VPN included with any of these, cloud storage is common and often very generous, password managers are included with most, there’s varying degrees of identity protection offered and we’re even seeing webcam protection becoming common.
These are all things you would ordinarily pay for via a stand-alone product, so it is rather nice to see this arms race happening which equates to more protection for us.
But is it worth the cost? These suites can be very expensive, and the price is more than just creeping up a little each year. Each time we run this Labs we’re almost in awe of how high some of these companies are pushing their subscription pricing. But that’s if you’re buying direct. As we stress over and over in this article, you can save an absolute fortune but getting your preferred suite from an online reseller. Amazon is rife with them, and the product is 100% the same as if you bought direct.
So! Have a look at what the various suites offer in our very comprehensive group test, then head online and shop around for the best price you can find on the day (these often change as frequently as shares on the stock exchange). And that’s job done. Just remember to disable any auto-renew feature if you want to review your choice after 12 months!

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