Paid-for products
If you're looking for something that includes a support line you can scream at when things have gone wrong, however, you might be best off looking at the paid-for commercial products.

Thankfully, prices for combined security suites have dropped dramatically in recent years: a good software package can be purchased for under £50, and typically comes with a year's updates included in the price.

Kaspersky Internet Security Suite is an example of an integrated security solution.

Kaspersky Internet Security, ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite, and Webroot are all well regarded in the industry, and include firewall, antivirus, and anti-spam technologies in a single package to ensure that you're fully protected against whatever nasties the Internet has to throw at you.

What to do if you're infected
If you find your system infected with a nasty bug - whether or not you already have some security software installed - then the first step is not to panic. Most of the time it's possible to clean your system without losing any of your files, providing you go about things in a logical manner.

If you're a Windows user, you should first reboot into Safe Mode by restarting your system and tapping the F8 key before the Windows logo appears to bring up the boot options menu. Safe Mode is a special, restricted version of Windows that prevents many of your add-on programs from running - and it may help an antivirus application that has been disabled by a virus to start working again, allowing you to run a full scan of your system.

If that doesn't work, try one of the web-based virus scanners such as Trend Micro's HouseCall, Kaspersky's Free Virus Scan, or Panda Activescan. These run a scan on your computer via your browser, and use a different set of definitions to the virus scanner you have installed. As a result, they stand a good chance of finding something that your installed scanner has missed.

Another area to check is the System Restore Points included in modern versions of Windows. These back up your critical system files when they get changed, and can be a handy way to roll back your operating system to a point before the infection happened. You can find System Restore in System Tools, or in the Control Panel in older versions of Windows.

Finally, if you're a little more technically-minded, there are bootable CDs that help to clean viruses from your system. A tool like the SystemRescueCd bypasses your main operating system altogether, ensuring that it can scan your hard drive for nasties without getting spied upon by a running virus or Trojan.

Security for business
Business users should check licence agreements before buying: many of the cheaper packages are only licensed for home use, and if you get in trouble with a product in a business environment the company producing the software will likely wash its hands of you.

Support is a key feature of commercial security software. Like any software, security packages aren't without their flaws. Updates to anti-virus signatures in particular have caused problems in the past, misidentifying critical system files as malware and deleting them, only to have the system grind to a halt as a result.

Although commercial software is no more immune that these issues than free software, having forked over cash does leave you in a better bargaining position when it comes to getting your issue resolved quickly.

Whichever type of software you plump for - free or paid-for - the one essential piece of advice to stick by is to keep it up to date. New viruses and malware appear all the time, and without the latest updates installed, your software will not know the tell-tale 'signatures' of these malicious pieces of software in order to identify and neutralise their threat.

Tags: spyware anti-virus malware kaspersky windows firewall firewalls phishing symantec security avg antivirus malicious software zonealarm mcafee