Best Antivirus for Android to Keep Your Devices Safe and Secure

best antivirus for android

Android, as we know, Google’s mobile operating system is the most widespread mobile operating system prevalently found in more than eighty percent of mobiles available worldwide. The more smartphones are becoming feature-packed with high-end hardware’s more sophisticated, the more Android is becoming with its every release. Currently, Android is in its 10th release and about to release 11th soon. With such releases, we also need to keep the antiviruses up to date. Here, we will give you the list of the best antivirus for android and why you need them.

Why We Need Antivirus Programs To Protect Our Device

The more popular Android is more it’s becoming an easy target to malware, Trojans, and virus attacks. As a normal smartphone user in our day to day life, we depend so much on the device—we log in to our social media accounts, banks, and mobile wallet accounts. We perform several monitory transactions and fill in personal details at many places using the phones. We also store our passwords and government ID. All this is sensitive information of a higher degree for the user. The android user needs protection from any such malicious users or hackers or software at any cost.

As a user buying an antivirus may not be your first priority but looking at the looming data theft threat across the world where big organizations like banks lose millions of dollars to malware and ransomware attack, we as a user should rethink. Even if not initially, but if your smartphone has such malware’s residing in. The user may not even know the presence of a malware or virus, but there are symptoms from which the user can guess whether that is the case, just like a doctor diagnoses based on symptoms.

Symptoms Of An Infected Device

The symptoms are like smartphone running slower than regular, and even after cleanup, there is no improvement, unwanted pop-ups which keep on coming even being offline. Applications getting loaded slowly, and they keep on crashing and closing abruptly, device getting rebooted all of a sudden, flash messages when device boots up, etc. There are many cases in which everything runs smoothly, and the malware is just running in the backdrop smoothly without showing any symptoms. Those are more dangerous as these viruses aim not to disrupt your device but steal precious and sensitive information from your device.

Advantages And Features Of An Antivirus

In this article, we are going to discuss how we can protect our smartphone from data theft or virus attack and what is the best antivirus software available in the market to do so. Gone are days when antivirus just uses to scan the device for malware; nowadays, they can actively stop users from visiting malicious web pages or downloading malware applications. They also give time to time warning to the users in case some malware is running in the background or not. They also have a very strong firewall.

The features that an ideal mobile antivirus must have are background screening where the antivirus scans anything and everything that a user opens on their smartphone. This acts as real-time protection of smartphones from any type of threat. Second is the full system scanning feature. In this feature, we can prompt the antivirus to run, or we can schedule it to do a full scan of the smartphone from time to time. This feature also triggers when the antivirus goes through any update.

Third and most new and revolutionary among the above features is virus definition. There is a virus definition database that each antivirus maintains and updates them from time to time. This definition stores all the indicators to detect any new malware. Whenever there is new malware, found the antivirus companies create virus definitions for the same and push the updates to the users. The moment the virus definition finds any new malware, it terminates all the files pertaining to the threat from getting executed. It creates a quarantine space for the files and keeps them there isolated from the device. As a next step, antivirus software processes and cleans those files.

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Different Techniques That Antivirus Uses

The various techniques these antiviruses use to get rid of the malware are Signature-based detection where they look for all executable files and cross-check them with their stored list of antivirus. The second method is a heuristic-based where the antivirus program runs codes which are prone to catch suspicious files and code blocks. All of this happens in real-time without interrupting system processes. The third one is Behavioural-based detection technology, where the antivirus tries to diagnose the nature of suspicious malware application during its execution and, based on the characteristic, decides whether it’s a threat or not. It is also called Intrusion detection.

The fourth type of detection mechanism is through data mining where antivirus programs look at the trend and with some features, and through extracting and identifying a pattern in the data trail which the malware or virus leaves, it tries to flag them. Last but not least is the sandbox method, where antivirus software creates a separate virtual environment and executes the application inside that environment. Then it uses a behavioral method to identify the threat. The antivirus program creates a quarantined virtual environment to save the device and its integrity.

How To Install An Antivirus Program

You are now coming to the fact that how you can have these antivirus programs installed on your device. Well, for Android devices, it’s through Google’s play store. You can search for various antivirus software programs and once you decide which one you want to have based on the research which we are going to provide you in this article. You can pay for the program from google pay gateway. After that, you will see Android downloading and then installing the antivirus program on your smartphone.

You will get regular updates as well for a minimum period of one year. After one year, you will have to renew your license by paying a small amount. If the performance of your current antivirus program is not satisfactory, then you can uninstall it and go for a new one anytime you want. If you do not want to spend money on paid antivirus programs and happy with regular protection, then you can get their free versions as well.

Famous Antivirus Program Brands And Their Features

Let’s now quickly go through the ten best antivirus program brands available in the market.

AVG Antivirus

It is one of the most famous and oldest antivirus programs to enter into the market. First, they ventured into the PC market and are a force to reckon with there. Now they also have an android protection suite for the smartphones which are available in free and paid versions.

It’s a feature-loaded security application where users enjoy features like protection vault for sensitive and private content, network scanner over Wi-Fi, app locker, and many more. There are additional features as well, like device tuning and performance-boosting. It also removes junk files regularly from the device and tries to free up RAM from unwanted applications.

Avast Android Antivirus Suite

Avast is a market leader in the antivirus market, and it has achieved that name because of the unique features it packs in its antivirus software. It’s not just a scanner security application rather provides a plethora of options from call blocking to firewalls. It even goes to protect your data from physical theft where, in case of stolen devices, user can access their remote device and wipe out everything from the device.

Earlier, it rolled out its paid version, but now it’s completely free. Thanks to many ads, but if you do not want ads, then you can pay a small amount and get the ad-free version.

Bitdefender Android Antivirus Suite

Another big name in this industry is Bitdefender. The USP of there android antivirus program is that unlike other vendors who provide so many other options but at the cost of heavy application. Bitdefender has an extremely lightweight application that does not perform free up a device from background processes or clear RAM.

It does not scan applications regularly, but it does the same at the time it is first installed and whenever it runs into any update. Also, you can schedule the same. It’s a real-time virus defender program, and now it has launched its versions for wearable devices as well, which can alarm you if you’re leaving your phone unattended.

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McAfee Android Antivirus Suite

It’s very well known in the desktop user community as it was also among the first ones to jump into the security industry. Now they have their android versions as well. Other than features like real-time scan, remotely wiping sensitive information in case of stolen device and user warnings. It also has some new features.

It has the capability to scan your smartphone applications to check whether they are sending any information out from the device to themselves or not. The software also verifies whether the user has given it permission to send or receive information like location, pictures, contact, call history, and other information. It also blocks the user from accessing malicious websites and download malware content.

Kaspersky Android Antivirus Suite

Though it came later than players like McAfee or Norton or Bitdefender, it has huge respect in the security market. Even it’s a free version for Android has abilities superior to paid versions of other competitors. They have a fierce development team backing this software, which keeps updating its definitions at a faster pace than other players.

Kaspersky s/w has the capability to warn users before they click any link or try to download any content. This early warning system is of great help. It’s like prevention is better than cure. In its test trials conducted by certification authorities, Kaspersky picked up 99.9 percent malware.

Norton Android Antivirus Suite

The solely respected name in this industry for its enterprise-level security suite has an impressive android antivirus solution as well. In the AV benchmarking test, it picked up a hundred percent score by detecting all malware poured on it. Their mobile solution is free of cost and supported by ads.

Norton antivirus is able to scan detect and automatically remove the malware files without user intervention. You can also lock your smartphone by sending an SMS and even remotely lock your device. In case if your device is missing, then Norton protects it by locking it in case often unsuccessful attempts.

Avira Android Antivirus Suite

Avira is another famous name in the block, and its android suite is no different. Other than all the features which the above antivirus programs offer, it has a new feature of scanning not only the internal device but also the external storage. It also rates your applications based on its algorithm to score them based on how reliable they are with user information.

The anti-virus can also warn off by scanning your email of any fishing attempts of malware. It also offers users an admin portal where you can manage security on multiple android devices.

Sophos Android Antivirus Suite

It was the best android antivirus by AV test in 2015. Like Bitdefender, it does not goes through regular scans until scheduled but rather scans all the content when they are making their way into the device. It raises alerts in case if it finds the content or the app malicious by knowing its intent to leak information from the device.

When you want your Wi-Fi connection to be more secure, then you can use its QR code scanner to secure the network and generate a one-time password to authenticate any new user.

Trends Micro Android Antivirus Suite

This antivirus software not only scans new software but also prevents them from accessing another program which is against the admin rights. You can also scan your social media profiles by running through this application, and it can warn you in case if you are showing some sensitive information which you should not be.

It has paid and premium versions. Just like some other antivirus programs, it has an early warning system to warn users before they plan to download any malware application or content.

AHN Lab V3 Android Antivirus Suite

This South Korean company is a new kid in the arena and is not a big name. But in the AV benchmarking test, it scores more than 99 percent. It has built-in features to tune your device for higher performance. It has an antimalware warning system, protective vault, and a cleaner to secure privacy by clearing browsing history.

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