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Antivirus is a type of software program that protects your computer or mobile device against cyber threats such as viruses, worms, ransomware and spyware. It works by scanning your files and programs for malware and then removing or neutralizing them. It may also perform additional functions such as sandboxing, which runs potential harmful programs in a secure environment to prevent them from affecting your computer; and email protection, which scans your incoming and outgoing emails for malicious content.

Cybersecurity expert Josh Brunty spent nearly a decade working in cybersecurity, first as a digital forensics analyst with the West Virginia State Police and later as an instructor at Marshall University. By the end of his time in the field, he’d come to an important realization: Most people don’t need antivirus for their personal computers, at least not any more than they need car insurance.

Most modern antivirus solutions employ a variety of detection devices to find and stop new or unknown types of malware from infecting your computer, including specific detection, which looks for known parts or types of viruses; generic detection, which looks for patterns in common file structures; and heuristic scanning, which searches for similar-looking or suspicious files. These methods are often augmented with cloud-based analysis and real-time protection, which enables the software to detect and respond to a threat as it’s happening on your computer or mobile device.

Some antivirus tools offer a wide range of extra features, from additional scanning for phishing links and insecure websites to behavior-based ransomware protection layers that detect half the samples we test. Others bundle these benefits with traditional antivirus protection, such as G Data Antivirus, which has a full-grown utility that scores well in our tests and includes bonus security tools like spam filtering, BankGuard for financial transactions, and active defense against keyloggers.